So when I first joined this forum I had a 40 gal hex which is pictured on another thread, but I recently upgraded about 3 weeks ago to this 90 gal bowfront. I was able to find the full setup on craigslist for $500. It was completely covered in hair algae and took days to scrub. But now its back to show form. Check it out and tell me what you think, give me some ideas for stocking.

nice, I have a 72 bow that my wife wants to set back up, I really like the way the bows look when viewing through them. did yours come with a hood?

Yeah the look great, they remind me of sea world. lol yeah I found mine as a full setup tank hood stand sump lighting ....easily a $3k system for only 500.

Nice grab! Always easy to justify a good deal like that.

Awesome deal man, I love bowfronts! I bought my tank off CL in a condition and price similiar to yours. Took a lot of work and several months of battling runaway hair algea. Really like the rockwork, looks like your happened upon a great setup- glad you were able to snatch it up!

Yeah its great to find great deals, but its gotta be worth putting in the effort. What did you do besides endless scrapping of the rock to control the hair algae? Mines starting to grow back and I've just been using a toothbrush, but its just coming back daily.

Sorry for the late reply, but here's what I did:

Since I didn't have any corals I ran my lighting cycle at about 5 hours a day.

About every week I would pull all the LR out of the tank and use a plastic bristled scrub brush to get all the HA I could off. I'd do this in a separate container of old SW (left over from my WC). I'd dunk the scrubbed rock and shake off any stuff in another bucket of old SW then place it back in the tank.

My nitrates were incredibly high, 80+ppm, so I began dosing vodka. This lowered my nitrates by about 20ppm per week. One time I accidentally overdosed and killed my 1 fish (a lawnmower blenny). If you go this route just be careful and conservative.

I dedicated about 1/3 of my sump to a modified refugium. I bought a breeding divider and placed some chaeto with a 5.2K bulb on a 12 hour cycle opposite of daylight schedule. I have to trim the chaeto back every two weeks, about a large feezer bag sized portion, that I just end up disposing of.

Switch filter socks out every 2-3 days.

Make sure you are doing using RO/DI water for topoff/salt mixing.

As of now I run the refugium, skimmer, 2 phosban reactors (one with carbon, other with GFO), and switch out filter socks every 3-4 days. This keeps my nitrates below 10ppm and phosphates very low with a well stocked reef tank that I feed several times a day.

Keep pressing on, things will eventually stabilize.

Good score. I had a 72g bow for several years and really liked it.

But I also ran a 45G hex for a long time and am kind of partial to them. It was my first reef back in the 90's, went to fresh for a while and then back to a reef.

updated picture couldn't get the whole tank in frame.

Love it!!

Thank you!!

how are the corals that you bought from me doing?

they were doing really good and then I had a temp swing about 6 degrees water got up to 82 so all the polyps have been hiding since. I'm slowing bringing the temp down in hopes that they will recover. I'm back down to 76

Wow, my temp swings go from 78 to 81.5..lately its from 80-81.5 because of the warmer temps. Hope they pull through!

Temp swings shouldn't really be an issue. My tank has temp swings from 79 down to 68 and back with no issues when I do water changes.

There are similar temp swings in the ocean as well.