90 gallon mystery budget build I have no business starting...

[andrewkw]

I have 2 other reefs + a frag tank. The other tanks are softy dominated mostly because I lost the majority of my lps and sps in a long distance move 2+ years ago. I've restocked some but soft corals continue to outgrow everything else. I'm not 100% sure this will be a reef but I'm leaning towards budget sps reef. I've never had an sps dominate system. The frag tank is essentially coral overflow + occasional QT.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/10-gallon-sexy-shrimp-softy-reef.437095/
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/112-gallon-mixed-reef-is-looking-like-a-reef-again.309857/

This tank through the 9 years I've had it has always been for weird stuff. I originally got it to house dwarf cuttlefish. Their lives came and went, I got them one more time before switching to Octopus. After a I kept a couple of Octopus I wanted a new challenge so I ended up with garden eels. I absolutely loved the garden eels but it was no possible to take them with me since I had numerous reefs to move a long distance which also included a 6 week stay at my parents house before moving into this house. So I would have had to wash out the 100s and 100s of lbs of sand twice.

I restocked the tank with a volitan lion fish and snowflake eel. Unfortunately neither lasted much more then a year. The eel got stung by the lion during aggressive eating and the Lion just stopped eating and wasted away. So the tank sat empty for months. If live rock was still plentiful I'd probably consider breaking it down but the rock has been live for 10 years and fiji and tonga live rock may never be available again.

Plus I don't have much to do out here. I moved to the middle of nowhere which has been a challenge at best. With winter coming it's a new project. I have limited funds to devote to this but excessive amounts of time so hopefully that balances out the build.

The reason I'm actually starting a new build vs staring at a tank with live rock in it is one of the bulkheads started leaking. It's been leaking for a bit but probably not too long. Salinity dropped to 1.024 but I hadn't exactly been monitoring it much for a few months. Floor under was wet but not ruined. Plumbing taken apart and new bulkheads ordered. I took this opportunity to finally skin the 2x4 stand. I'm a terrible woodworker with no imagination but I can build the rocketengineer 2x stands without too much trouble.

When I get it re-aquascaped I'll post a new pic and that will hopefully shed some light onto what the tank will become. I'm considering a few different things.

Budget SPS build - I need some new equipment so even budget build will cost a bit.
Unique FOWLR - perhaps the most likely but if I get something exotic and it's only 1 or 2 fish then I run the risk of that fish dying and being back to an empty tank
Clown fish tank - I do have experience keeping a lot of different anemones.
Something else ? - who knows I haven't decided anything but I am leaning towards sps system. This despite the fact I love the weird stuff..

Here are some old pics of the previous setups in this tank.

I'll run down what I have and need for the tank in my next post.

 

[dantimdad]

Awesome!

Love the garden eel!

 

[andrewkw]

Pictures came out different sizes as I pulled most of them from various hosting places I no longer use

Anyway so what I have is the 90 gallon tank it's 3x2x2.
Small not practical 20g sump. This houses a giant oversized ATI BM250 skimmer. There really isn't room for anything else. I am considering adding a 5g fuge. A 10g wont fit in the stand with the existing sump. I do not use a refugium on my other display tanks, but I typically have in the past. The big skimmer should handle any bioload in the tank.
Old powerheads good for fish but not much else. Hydor ect.
Lighting : when it was just fish only I used a single Par38 hung high. This works fine, but I may soon have my first LED burnout. I have noticed it's been going off at times despite being on a timer. IF I go SPS or even a high light demanding anemone I may use my one 250w Metal Halide - I use this on my frag tank only because I have it. If I don't need high demanding light I'll just go with a cheap black box or 2.
Since the sand from the fowlr has been sitting a couple of days it probably needs to be rinsed. To my surprise it had no bad smell but a fair bit of detritus. It was only setup less then 2 years. I have 5 gallon buckets of sugar sized sand from the days of the garden eels.

Later I hope to clean up the mess around the tank and get a photo of it in it's current state. I've been playing around with the aquascape a bit but since I'm not sure what I'm doing I haven't attached any rocks together..

 

[cancun]

I have 2 other reefs + a frag tank. The other tanks are softy dominated mostly because I lost the majority of my lps and sps in a long distance move 2+ years ago. I've restocked some but soft corals continue to outgrow everything else. I'm not 100% sure this will be a reef but I'm leaning towards budget sps reef. I've never had an sps dominate system. The frag tank is essentially coral overflow + occasional QT.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/10-gallon-sexy-shrimp-softy-reef.437095/
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/112-gallon-mixed-reef-is-looking-like-a-reef-again.309857/

This tank through the 9 years I've had it has always been for weird stuff. I originally got it to house dwarf cuttlefish. Their lives came and went, I got them one more time before switching to Octopus. After a I kept a couple of Octopus I wanted a new challenge so I ended up with garden eels. I absolutely loved the garden eels but it was no possible to take them with me since I had numerous reefs to move a long distance which also included a 6 week stay at my parents house before moving into this house. So I would have had to wash out the 100s and 100s of lbs of sand twice.

I restocked the tank with a volitan lion fish and snowflake eel. Unfortunately neither lasted much more then a year. The eel got stung by the lion during aggressive eating and the Lion just stopped eating and wasted away. So the tank sat empty for months. If live rock was still plentiful I'd probably consider breaking it down but the rock has been live for 10 years and fiji and tonga live rock may never be available again.

Plus I don't have much to do out here. I moved to the middle of nowhere which has been a challenge at best. With winter coming it's a new project. I have limited funds to devote to this but excessive amounts of time so hopefully that balances out the build.

The reason I'm actually starting a new build vs staring at a tank with live rock in it is one of the bulkheads started leaking. It's been leaking for a bit but probably not too long. Salinity dropped to 1.024 but I hadn't exactly been monitoring it much for a few months. Floor under was wet but not ruined. Plumbing taken apart and new bulkheads ordered. I took this opportunity to finally skin the 2x4 stand. I'm a terrible woodworker with no imagination but I can build the rocketengineer 2x stands without too much trouble.

When I get it re-aquascaped I'll post a new pic and that will hopefully shed some light onto what the tank will become. I'm considering a few different things.

Budget SPS build - I need some new equipment so even budget build will cost a bit.
Unique FOWLR - perhaps the most likely but if I get something exotic and it's only 1 or 2 fish then I run the risk of that fish dying and being back to an empty tank
Clown fish tank - I do have experience keeping a lot of different anemones.
Something else ? - who knows I haven't decided anything but I am leaning towards sps system. This despite the fact I love the weird stuff..

Here are some old pics of the previous setups in this tank.

I'll run down what I have and need for the tank in my next post.

I love the cuddle fish pic! [emoji3]

 

[cancun]

Pictures came out different sizes as I pulled most of them from various hosting places I no longer use

Anyway so what I have is the 90 gallon tank it's 3x2x2.
Small not practical 20g sump. This houses a giant oversized ATI BM250 skimmer. There really isn't room for anything else. I am considering adding a 5g fuge. A 10g wont fit in the stand with the existing sump. I do not use a refugium on my other display tanks, but I typically have in the past. The big skimmer should handle any bioload in the tank.
Old powerheads good for fish but not much else. Hydor ect.
Lighting : when it was just fish only I used a single Par38 hung high. This works fine, but I may soon have my first LED burnout. I have noticed it's been going off at times despite being on a timer. IF I go SPS or even a high light demanding anemone I may use my one 250w Metal Halide - I use this on my frag tank only because I have it. If I don't need high demanding light I'll just go with a cheap black box or 2.
Since the sand from the fowlr has been sitting a couple of days it probably needs to be rinsed. To my surprise it had no bad smell but a fair bit of detritus. It was only setup less then 2 years. I have 5 gallon buckets of sugar sized sand from the days of the garden eels.

Later I hope to clean up the mess around the tank and get a photo of it in it's current state. I've been playing around with the aquascape a bit but since I'm not sure what I'm doing I haven't attached any rocks together..

I can't wait to see what you do with your tank!!!! Keep us posted! [emoji3]

 

[Katrina71]

The cuddlefish melted my heart a little.

 

[cancun]

The cuddlefish melted my heart a little.

LOL! Mine too!!!! So cute!!!

 

[grassy_noel]

Captive bred clownfish harem and anemone tank? Check out BRS Tv Investigates latest episode. Seems like a good challenge and would probably only require new T5 lighting and livestock to get started.

You could start with only a couple bubble tip anemones and propagate them until you have enough to introduce a clutch of clowns.

If you want a real time-intensive budget-limited project, learn to breed the clowns yourself while you establish the anemones in the tank. Might just pay for itself eventually...

 

[Katrina71]

Your 90 cube is my dream tank BTW.

 

[andrewkw]

Clown harem is under consideration. Although I'm just as likely to do something else and put a couple of maroons in who are not good harem candidates. The price of lightning maroons has come down so much they are on my list of maybes. I do plan on deciding what I'm doing sooner rather then later since I'm actually going through the trouble of re-plumbing and aquascaping. I mentioned I skinned the 2x4 stand. I haven't done a door yet but the other sides are nearly done. This cost me all of $12. A couple of cans of clear coat. I have some old pallets pilled up in my yard and took them apart and attached to the 2x4 frame. I know some people will probably say I should have coated the inside with kills but this stand is 9 years old and in surprisingly good shape. Considering back then I knew even less about woodworking and it has gotten wet. There was no mold either from this recent spill or previous. I did sand it down and lightly covered it with some spray paint. It looks distressed.

The pallet wood is sanded down then clear coated then just nailed into the stand since it's not load bearing in any way. Now there are way nicer stands out there but as I mentioned I'm terrible at this kind of thing and in all the years of build threads of done here and other message boards I've always just cropped the tank, but here is the stand :

That's just an old sheet of plywood under the stand. The hole in the side is because the overflow is on the side. It works fine here but the tank was originally designed this way due to where it was in my old house. A custom tank is no longer custom once you move out out of the space you designed it to fit!

 

[Katrina71]

Why not drill it out on both sides to look like bubbles? Throw some acrylic in there (like a coral viewer design) and put some LEDs under the stand to make it interesting.

 

[andrewkw]

So I'm 99% sure this will end up as my eventual sps reef. I haven't glued the rock so if you wish to make constructive criticism feel free to do so.

My only concerns are the height variance is not great enough. I like the footprint. The little led will soon be a 250w mh so it will look brighter and yes the heaters will go in the sump I just haven't turned on the return pump yet.

 

[NY_Caveman]

You probably already glued it, but I think it is great. The negative space looks so inviting it is pulling me to the rock.

 

[andrewkw]

This tank has taken a lot longer to get going then I would have thought. I added a QP 16 powerhead and I won a Nero 5 and hope to get that in the tank soon. Those 2 pumps should give me about 7000gph. I finally moved my 250w metal halide over the tank. Unfortunately there is almost a foot of snow outside and I did not finish my canopy / stand door. I might just get something for the winter to cover the hood. I just made a frame for the reflector to sit in. Surprisingly the halide is unoffensive. I think one or both of the sicce pumps on my old bm 250 have had it. They just rattle to the point where it's unusable. Unfortunately they no longer make parts for this skimmer. I can replace the pumps but need to rig some feet for them to rest on.

In the mean time I've added one acro. All of the stock for this tank, at least initially will come from my frag tank which is also skimmerless so I might as well try out the tank. It has been running for a couple of years, and the rock has been wet 10 but there hasn't been coral in this tank for a long time. Likely due to all the detritus I blew out of the rocks the NO3 in the 90 is a little high, maybe 20ppm but I have zero bio load so it will go down. Assuming this acro does okay for a few days I will add the remaining sps frags I have in my frag tank. I'll let them grow in until some point next year then hopefully get some new stock for the tank. I have a pair of lightning maroons I'd like to add to the tank they just have to stop trying to kill each other first. I have them in QT with a divider.

I didn't glue the acro in, just found a spot it could sit in and not get knocked over. I'm going to also have to get some blue led's. The 14k bulb is very white, but the shimmer is nice and I'm getting good coverage over the entire tank.

Before I separated the clowns:

 

[andrewkw]

These are basically C or even D grade frags more or less but it's still nice to have a little splash of colour and actual corals in the tank.

I did unfortunately shatter the one green acro I put in the day before but glued in a few pieces of it plus another frag. In addition I have 2 somewhat browned out pieces and one that was completely covered by a leather coral in my other tank that is the only one I'm not sure about. The others are all showing good polyp extension and should colour up.

4 acros including my thin branching green guy + a few that have browned out
Pocillopora
monti cap
birdsnest
montipora digitata

Keep in mind there are no reef stores near me. The closest one is 3 and a half hours and they have had questionable sps selection every time I've been there. Good stores are 7+ hours away. Shipping here is possible but problematic and even more problematic now that it's already winter. I'm a firm believer that any coral looks beautiful if it's healthy and in a few months time this tank should look halfway decent. The clown fish will go in soon. Anything is an improvement to a tank that just has live rock in it. The tank is in my living room and there was no way I was going to dry out my live rock given the current state of things so I basically had to do something with this tank.

I'm basically playing everything by ear (eye) this is a non traditional build that I would not recommend to someone who does not have experience. For now I'll just continue to test, dose by hand initially and pick up a dosing pump when one is needed. I have to work on getting the skimmer going and some blue leds to compliment the white 14k look. For now I'm not even planning a cleanup crew but should algae start to become an issue I will of course get something to handle it.