Once upon a time I had a 90 gallon tank. It started as a FOWLR build, and slowly (expensively) morphed into mixed reef. There were many mistakes, and many problems. BUT! I persevered for 5 years and ended up with a reef I was happy with..... until I had to move cross country, had to break it all down, and didn't have the room to take the tank with me. Nearly everything from the old tank was sold when I broke it down, but I still have the lights and RO/DI. More on those at a later date. It's a terrible read, but here's the old thread. I kinda drifted away and the final good years didn't actually make it into the thread.
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=1630856
Fast forward to today, and life has come around to where I can build up a new tank. Or, at least I will, around Christmas time, thanks to my still-awesome Wife. Welcome to the planning stage! Right now I am going to spend my energy in the world of the theoretical. This means I need to define the end-point, and find the best path to reach that goal. The better the plan, the better the result, rather than the ill-conceived beginnings of my last tank that morphed through far too many filtration and lighting systems. Plan it right, do it right, do it once, enjoy the result. So, let's get the important part out of the way here and define what I'm going to build!
I have 6 feet to work with, so my goal is a 120-180 gallon mixed reef. I am targeting my favorites for stocking, so this means a heavy focus on LPS corals, with the ability to also support montipora capricornis and various clams. I'm also quite partial to gobies and blennies. Filtration and lighting will all focus around supporting that kind of livestock. I'm looking to go for the long-haul here, and grow out the colonies that I want, not just a scattershot of frags. Supporting other species will be nice but I'll only stock what the build will support.
The tank will be right on the basement slab and I have a utility room about 10 feet away from where the tank will be. This means I can remote a lot of things such as change-water mixing tanks, and I can plumb into the house drain. So initial focus is going to be in that utility room and the supporting infrastructure outside of the actual tank. I want it to be easy to access what I need to work on, a key feature here will be making maintenance as trouble free as possible. It's not a terribly large room so I'll have to be careful not to let scope-creep get the best of me.
Anyway, that's enough for now. The core mission is defined. Now to break out the camera, tape measure, and note-paper to start figuring out a lot of things. That and trolling craigslist for juuuuuust the right tank at a good deal. I'm on a budget unfortunately.