My first tank, 80gallon

[kromebusa]

Unbelievable, a buddy of mine had an 80 gallon reef/fish tank all set up and working, lost interest in it, redirected h is focus and let his tank go. His wife told him to get rid of it, I got it.
Went and picked up last night at 4:00pm, finished putting it together at about midnightish. I found a couple posts here that helped me move the stuff, lots of coral, 5 shrimp, handful of turbo snail, handful of black snail, handfull of hermitt crabs, blue tang(dori), dominoe(spot) and two others, not sure what they are, very timid fish though, spot has been bullying them. when it was feeding time, they just sat and waited for scraps while dori and spot ate up all the brine shrimp.

I am going to attempt pic post my endeavor to give you an idea of how bad it was. My wife wasn't so sure about getting one, but now that It is up and looking good, she loves it. She even helped me clean the nasties. between her, my buddy and me we got everthing cleaned. every piece of the tank was coated like the one in the pic, scraped our fingers raw! Looks to be well worth it.

[kromebusa]

here are some more

[Woodstock]

AWESOME!!! Congrats on your new reef!! Kudos to the wife too

[cheeks69]

Welcome to the reefing world
Congrats...looks like a very nice setup !

In my humble opinion I would get rid of the Domino Damsel, it's very aggressive and territorial and will bully or eventually kill any passive or smaller fish and quite possibly any new addition.

[Stevenmi]

I thinks I see a pj cardnal in your first pic....

Steve

[kromebusa]

shot from this morning

[cheeks69]

Looks good
One other suggestion I have is get rid of those RIO powerheads, there have been many problems with them, just terrible quality. There have been reports of mild shocks to rust combined with the use of oils in their chamber made for disasterous results to many reefers. I would use the Seio much better IMO/E

[addict]

Robert's right on the money on both of his assertions.

First, 'spot' will have to go if you're going to want to add anything extra, and if you don't want it to kill everything else in the tank eventually... Domino Damsels are probably the most aggressive damsel, and they're also very territorial...

Rio powerheads are plain bad news... the main problem is that they don't have a thermal shutdown circuit, so if they get overloaded, they just explode instead... and they're oil cooled, rather than epoxy-cooled, so you not only shock everything in your tank when they decide to go belly up, but you also get a nice oil slick in your tank that you get to clean out.

I've heard stories of people who lost their entire tank to a malfunctioning Rio pump, so it's better safe than sorry. You can always use them for mixing up saltwater or something non-vital, but personally I wouldn't risk having them in the tank. MaxiJet are probably the best powerhead you can get... they're small, powerful and efficient... and they shut down on thermal overload.

Those points aside, that's quite a nice score there... you basically got about a $1,500 gift from your friend.

The pic of your wife is great too.

[kromebusa]

yes steve, have two PJ cardanals in there.

So in buying new equipment, I want to go with nothing hanging on the back, I want to run it all from underneath, what is a good setup to go with?

[cheeks69]

Originally Posted by kromebusa

yes steve, have two PJ cardanals in there.

So in buying new equipment, I want to go with nothing hanging on the back, I want to run it all from underneath, what is a good setup to go with?

Well if your tank isn't pre-drilled then you'll need an overflow box or prefilter. Here's some ideas on how to set them up :

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-01/gt/index.php

http://www.melevsreef.com/what_sump.html

[aqujoe247]

Welcome to RS, and Congrats.
I'm a beginner myself so can't give you much advise. It will be easier and cheaper to find an used tank and convert it into a sump/refugium than to buy a prefab sump. It all depends on the height of your stand but I would put the biggest tank that would fit underneath, and just add baffles to it.

What kind of fish and coral did you want to keep in your tank?

GOOD LUCK!

[kromebusa]

Thanks for the information robert. It all seems simple enough. and I will get to buy a router to do it! Wooohoo, more tools.
I have an excel program, you put in the dimensions of the tank and it gives you the list of lumber and directions on how to build your tank stand. I have a buddy that is a wood worker and has quite the tool room, and has built his own cabinets that look awesome. We are going to build my tank stand custom. I will probably build the sump and everything first and design the bottom specifically for that. As far as the type of coral and fish, it is already filled with alot of rock and about 4 fish. Once it stabalizes and i get all my stuff built, I will decide on the fish.

[cheeks69]

Sounds like a good plan, just make sure you start a reef chronicles thread so we can follow the progress.