Triplemom's and Jwin's 90 Gallon Upgrade

Let the upgrade begin! The tank has been officially purchased and is sitting at the LFS to be picked up Saturday morning. I will have lots of questions! I've never done an upgrade before and I'm really nervous about it. Jwin and I will document our upgrade and of course, post pictures along the way!

Right now, our immediate goals are:
1. Get the tank/canopy/stand home intact...I'm already having an anxiety attack about that because I know how Jwin drives!
2. Paint the back of the tank. I'm going to use the same blue we used for the 46 BF. Five years later, I still love that color!
3. Plan the DIY sump, which Jwin will be building. Not sure which tank we will use...30, 33, 40? Long or breeder? We will be measuring and trying to figure that out. He plans a sump/refugium.
4. Once the sump is plumbed and ready, do a full leak test with tap water for at least 24 hours.
5. Decide on equipment, sand, lights, etc. I will be using base rock at the bottom, then probably dead sand with a little of my live sand. I have about 3 inches now and will probably want the same sand bed. I probably have 60 or so pounds of LR. We started with 25, but I've added much more rock to the tank over the last 5 years. My current sump is also full of rock.

I guess that's it for now!

 

Reef On! Good luck, keep thinking it out, you'll be fine.

 

congrats on the upgrade!

 

What's this about my driving? I don't know what you are talking about...

I guarantee we have at least 60 or 70 pounds of live rock in our system at the moment. As my dear mother said, we will be buying all dead/base rock (hopefully big pieces too) and will be using them more on the bottom of the setup, and will be placing our existing live rock on top. Dead sand for about a 3 inch sand bed, with a cup or two of our existing sand to get that jump-started.

We are going to probably just toss our old sand out after using it to start things off. It's old, dirty towards the bottom, and we want to avoid the horror story of starting another cycle by just adding all of it to a new tank. I understand that taking it out in "pie pieces" can work to avoid starting a cycle, but we'd rather just avoid that altogether and not risk it. Dead sand it is!

The sump will have a fuge in it, an area for skimmer/heaters/reactors, bubble trap, and then return pump chamber. Simple (hopefully) and easy.

 

Tank!

Here's the tank in all it's drilled glory (why you would have a gum/candy machine in a LFS is beyond me...I have visions of little kids dumping their used gum in the tanks)! I'm really excited. I've never had a drilled tank before! ;D



Stand and canopy are officially home...but still in the car...waiting on my slave child (AKA =Jwin=) to show up and carry it all inside! Tank comes home in the morning!

 

I guess your slave child got home, because here's the stand in front of our old tank. Please ignore the mess as we prepare for this adventure, it's normally cleaner around the tank

 

Yay, slave child!

 

Looks awesome!

 

Tank is Home!

My office is a disaster zone. The new tank is against the window for now until we get ready to change out the tanks and move everything to the new one. That's going to be an ordeal...but here's the tank! I've been working on removing stray pieces of silicone, which is not fun at all.



Jwin and the nosy husky checking out the tank

 

I ordered the same brand tank. I feel ya on removing stray pieces of silicone. Exciting times!