UPDATE 9/16 - Gabby and Brian's 90g Reef

Looks great. One suggestion though. You may have a problem running your GFO reactor in the first chamber as there will be alot of bubbles in there from the tank and skimmer.(Reactor pump may suck these bubbles up giving you an air pocket in your reactor.) You may have to add a little shelf in the refugium compartment for the reactor pump. You will just have to be vigilant about macro clogging the pump.

 

It may be easier to put the GFO in the return section anyway (depending on where we place the sump in the stand).

 

To be honest I dont like the sump design, it leaves you no way to control the flow thru it.
take a look at this thread, it has a slightly different design- sump help

 

Okay, I will reconsider!

All of the corals are looking good. Also, I am starting to see some diatoms on my sand bed. Could this be the result of a small, quick cycle? Or silica from the new sand? Or phosphate from the new rocks? I will have to test the levels when I get home. We really need to build the sump to get the other equipment going (skimmer, GFO).. This past weekend we worked on the canopy and moved a frag tank that Brian had at his parents house to the tub... The main structure is built, but we still have to mount the LED's in there.

One other serious, serious, major, critical problem.. We were going to have the top of the canopy open, and the sides closed (besides holes for the wires). This is not going to be possible... We need to cover the top, and leave the back wall of the canopy open. Yesterday I noticed that there were drips of water on top of the T5 fixture on the tub (which is currently directly next to the tank. I noticed this when Brian and I had just gotten home from work, and had not worked on the tank since the day before. There is a small damsel in the tub, which is too small to cause the number of droplets that were on fixture, unless he was jumping all day or something. The bad news is that it rained yesterday. Our apartment was renovated last year, so almost everything is new, (besides the ceilings). The buildings used to be a yarn factory, decades ago. It was renovated to be a very nice, artsy apartment complex. I'm not sure how old these ceilings are, but I am hoping that weren't painted with lead paint at one time....

It has been raining all week.. Our apartment is a loft, with no real walls.. It is necessary that we stain and seal the stand outside. It is supposed to be hot and sunny all weekend, so this will be the perfect time to get this done. We are going to have to put many, many coats of polyurethane on the top of the canopy, to make sure it is protected from any leaks that may occur. We put four coats on the stand. I am thinking we will do the same for the inside of the canopy, but maybe five or six for the top. We still have to get doors and the trim for the stand and canopy, but this probably won't be done for a while, as we clearly have more important things to work on (and spend money on)!

Here are some pics of the canopy so far, sorry they are a little bit dark:

 

Diatoms are from the silicate. Hermits will clean them up but they should disapear when the silicates are gone. Flow through the refugium sometimes is considered important but I feel in a closed system flow rate is nothing to be concerned about after all the macro is always in contact with water from your system and the rate at which it absorbs nutrients is not effected by the rate of flow. If the water was running through the refugium never to return I would say absolutely the rate of flow should be slowed but in a closed system it is constantly recycling through the refugium. I have been running mine in the exact same way as yours and it has always worked just fine. Canopy looks great!!

 

We actually considered this design before that post, but figured that the advantages didn't really outweigh the cost of the extra glass panels. It worked well for the 37g.

Update, more diatoms. I know they will go away. We will be working on the tank more this weekend, so more to come!

 

Okay so we made some progress yesterday!

Canopy
The canopy is stained and sealed. It is just sitting outside in the heat of the sun to allow the fumes from the polyurethane to disperse. We still need to order the doors for both the stand and canopy, but they are like $30 each.. So we will hopefully order them in a few weeks.





Cleaning
Also, we spent hours and hours cleaning old equipment. I couldn't deal with the nightmare of decaying matter in my laundry room ANYMORE. I mean this wasn't just a few dirty containers.. It was at least 10 buckets, 20 containers, a million miscellaneous pvc pieces, pumps, powerheads, the skimmer, and old useless things that we were never going to use (aka bioballs). Ugh, I won't miss that pile of junk. The bad news is that I was cleaning out the GFO, and I dropped the housing off the deck, smashing it into 3 pieces. So we need a new housing for that

Sump
We bought a 29g for the sump last week. Yesterday we ordered the glass for the baffles from glasscages. Though the shipping ended up being more than the cost of the glass itself, it still evened out to approximately $10/piece (cut to size). This sounded reasonable to me.

Return Pump
I also ordered Rio plus 2500 yesterday for the return. This is a 782 gph pump. The return will be travelling 5' vertically. At 4' and 6', this pump is rated at 529 and 375 gph respectively. I figure this isn't an exact science. At 5' it should exceed 400 gph, which we can restrict with a ball valve. I suppose it is better to buy a slightly more powerful pump and tone it down, rather than buying one that is borderline sufficient. Rio has worked well for us in the past, and has pretty good reviews. The only problem we had with our last Rio was that we didn't know how to connect it to the tubing.. Being completely new to the hobby, we just decided to epoxy it to a piece of PVC, using a half of a tube of epoxy. That old pump will be forever attached to that PVC lol. It goes without saying that you live and you learn.

Tank Overall Status
Oh yeah and by the way... I should probably mention something about the coral! Doing great! So are the fish. Just did a 20g water change yesterday. Not sure if I posted this, but we also transferred a 20g frag tank that Brian had at his parents house to the tub here. I think it is crashing. I am about to take out the nice corals. Don't know what I am doing with the rest. Brian and I are still in debate about whether or not we are going to re-setup the frag tank.

Here is a pic of the tank so far (before the diatom outbreak). I'm not really happy with the rock-scape. I hate rockscaping. Its so hard because you can barely see what you are doing. Brian and I trying to verbally direct each other is like a comedy act. If I ever were to sink as low as to hire a professional to do work on my tank, it would be to do the rock scape.


Sand/Flow issue
Oh and about the issue of the sand being to light. It seems to be more weighted down ever since the diatoms took over. I am going to try to throw in a few more powerheads today.

Koralia
Oh yeah, and I think I messed up one of the powerheads (koralia evo 1050) when I was cleaning it. I know koralias are known to have problems with going backwards. But this is worse. It goes backwards 80% of the times that I turn it on. I have to plug it in several times to get it to go in the right direction.

Skimmer
Any input on how long I should wait to get this skimmer up and running? On our last tank, we waited at least 6 months. We have a very small bioload (a clown, a 3" wrasse, and a ywg. Aside from zoa's, I'm not sure that we have any softies, but we do have some LPS, but not an excessive amount. Compared to what I see in other tanks, our bioload is slim to none.

 

So the glass panels for the sump came yesterday. Overall, I am happy with my purchase from GlassCages. The panels were well packaged and exactly what I ordered (1/4" thick, correct dimensions, sanded smooth edges). Great deal for the price (it worked out to about $10/piece including shipping).

Additionally, it was great that we bought the glass from a company that actually builds aquariums.. They even slightly rounded the edges.






Now we just have to build it.

 

That's exactly how I designed my sump, except like said B4, I didn't put the GFO up front. I don't run GFO, but I do have a reactor running p04 remover. What I did put in the front chamber was a bag of charcoal since that section had the most initial flow, I figured it would be best placed there. Also, I didn't make the up and down flow walls up front for the bubble control. The macro I have in the main section catch and hold back any bubbling that may occur.

At the beginning....



And after some minor alterations.....

 

omg this looks really awesome and professional :O