The 3rd consideration was my quality: filtering/skimming/etc.
Of course live rock is one of the major considerations for this category. In my old tank I only had about 60lbs of live rock. This is not enough for the new tank size so I needed to make a decision on where to get rock. In the end I did not want to fight the hitchhiker battle that you normally have with new live rock (aptasia, pest crabs, bad worms, etc) and decided on using base rock. I was very lucky with this. I got all of my dry base rock from my boss and fellow/former reefer Dan. He let me take as much of his rock I wanted. I ended up taking more than I needed, and will be returning the left over to him. The rock that Dan gave me are very nice, and had been dry for at least 4 months. I decided to go ahead and bleach them, put them in the sun for a few days, then finally de-chlorinate the rocks with Amquel. Of course, this is intermixed with my live rock, which will eventually seed this base rock
Pic of the rocks after cleaning:
Pic of some of my rock that I put in after I added 55g of water:
Pics of full aquascaping (Before lighting)
Another:
I needed a new skimmer; my old skimmer was a reef octopus HOB. This was used in sump because I had overflow issues when I used it as a true HOB on the tank. This thing never worked well for me so I decided on using the Tunze 9010. This was the perfect balance of size, power and price. From all accounts, this thing works really well, is very quiet, and has the smallest footprint for its effectiveness. I have bought some of the mesh material to do the mesh mod.
For now the fuge will only hold chaeto, but eventually I will probably use reef mud or even expand to Remote DSB if space allows.
In my old setup, I had a DIY Phosban reactor. I was never happy with its performance so I am now using a 2 Little Fishes Phosban reactor. The water source from this is T’d off from the main return. I was willing to sacrifice 80gph at the return so that I could use less pumps/electric/heat. The return from the reactor is ported back into the baffles. Of course carbon can be used in this as well, but I prefer to run carbon in my baffles.
Here are some pics of the sump with the skimmer. These pictures do not show the phosban reactor, I will take pictures of that later:
And another:
I would like to also mention Rick (cubano2480). He offered me a few pieces free base and live rock. It ended up proving too difficult to meet because we live pretty far from one another.