Brett's 90 gallon reef

i would move the live stock out of the tank if you had alot of die off. as you will have another cycle and its unfair to have the fish suffer when all the prams go up and down

How’s it going now Brett? did you order everything you need? did you ever decide on a light? sorry if you already posted it somewhere…

im really busy right now and havent had the time to order anything other then my skimmer which will be here next week (it was on back order).

well heres a little update. tank is doing well now. the rock looks good and im really happy with the way it turned out. Unfortunatly my clownfish died. I think there was a lot of die off from drilling the rock. it was out of water for a long time. If i had thought out the tank more i probably would have drill the rock in the beginning.

I have mid-terms comming up and will not have alot of time for fish until the end of the month. I will get some pictures of the rock this weekend.

yesterday was pretty sucessful. we left the house for lunch around 12 and got some snails from DPA. When we got home i noticed my skimmer sitting on the front stoop. i was really surprised to say the least. Once i got that bad boy set up it was blowing some bubbles. i was very impressed. it was skimming crap out within a few hours. i cleaned the cup this morning and it was twice as dark as yesterday. im really impressed with this thing. the only thing i had a problem with was it’s size. i was expecting it to be an inch or 2 shorter, but it all worked out fine.

today i sucked some of the crap out of the tank and had to turn the skimmer off to do so. havent been able to get it back to normal yet, but i figure by tonight or tommrow it will break in.

PICTURE TIME!!





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That’s one hell of a skimmer!! If you ever decide it’s too tall and want to swap for my gate valve modded ASM G3 just let me know. I could do that since it’s you ;D ;D

Love the rock work - nice shapes. Lots of places for fishies to play and corals to grow.

Looking good Bret

WOW

Nice skimmer Brett.

Good luck with the tank, looks like it’s coming along pretty nice.

thanks guys.

the skimmer is great! i got 5 oz of tea colored funk for about 24 hours. I closed the gate vaulve and it should be getting darker soon.

did i mention this thing is really starting to kick in? Im very surprised at the huge chunks of stuff it pulls out.

the snails are doing a good job of eating the alage, its just taking a looong time. I will probably get some more in the comming weeks.

Just gotta love that ugly algae phase. :-("… looking good though brett, that skimmer looks pretty tough!

Which skimmer did you go with? Looks like a SRO XP 2000. If it is, you have one of the best skimmers on the market and I am jealous!

Do you plan on adding any more flow? I think that is often over-looked major aspect of a reef tank. If anyone has ever dove on a coral reef, you would understand the amount of current which reefs commonly experience.

i had less flow on the tank because i was not running a skimmer and i had smaller fish in the tank.

i will add the maxi-jet mod back into the set up later this week. that will give me a K-3,K-2, maxi- mod 400.
i also took the maxi out because it wasn’t the right type of flow. it really is alot of flow for a 4 foot tank. If it were on a timer it would work better.

i have plans to upgrade to a mp40. This may not happen until next year though. I will be ordering my LED’s sometime next month (maybe earlier). I’m hopeing to get an Apex to control the tank during the summer while im playing baseball.

I have two K4’s, and two K3’s in my 4ft tank. These pumps do not even compare to the tidal surge and current a wild reef experiences. There are many organisms besides fish which benefit from additional flow. The chemistry of any tank is also improved by proper flow. It is hard to have too much flow unless you have water spilling out of your tank.

i just dont like how strong the flow is. I believe that coral prefer gental random flow to hard blasting constant flow.

i need to expariment some more with the powerheads, hopefully i will get it to where i want it.

Just point the powerheads towards the surface of the water. I generally wouldn’t worry about a powerhead blasting a coral in one direction. Multi-directional flow would be desirable,but honestly I don’t think it makes a lot of difference. As long as any dead spots are reduced, your tank should be fine. No matter which method of circulation you employ.This wave breaks on a coral reef.The wave should give you an idea of what corals experience naturally. Now there obviously isn’t too much coral alive in the impact zone. But believe it or not the break is surrounded by pristine reef. Even a few meters away from the kill zone corals will thrive.

time for an update

but first a little unboxing… my package from BRS came in on the 28th

its like magic

so the long box had bulbs after all

but whats in the big box??



over the weekend i built my stand. it came out pretty well, but didnt take pics of the build.

i drilled my two tanks today (no school YahoO)






The Stand (with a 20 just to see how everything fit)



And some quick pics of the tank. not much to look at yet! was hoping to get my first fish last week but didnt come in. anyway…






the last picture is my failed attempt at stoping the micro bubble in my sump, but it did silence my overflow. theres also a bad shot of my skimmer, yesterday i emptyed it after about 6 days and got some funkey browish gunk. The only problem that i am haveing is that a few pieces of my prolifera are bleaching. Other than that everything has been fine. finally some good news coraline algae is beginning to cover the rocks tried to get some pics but really need a better lense/camera

How old are you again??
I have some skills now but no where near as knowledgeable as you are at your age

Indeed! What Al said! Good job! Stand and holes look good! I’d struggle with that now lol.

Great Job Brett!! Thanks for sharing the pics of your build. Ditto on what those guys said.

is the overflow loud with it being a ninety rather than overflow box?

how did you try to silence it in the third pic? my set up is similar