I'm a new member to this site; found about you guys at the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco; my son and I were about to go into the coral prop units when a kid pulled the fire alarm so everyone out they said.
I read many of the corals the new building will home are from your organization, that's really nice; loved the huge reef wall tank they have on Howard; specially the Emperor Angel.
I've dealt with reef tanks for about two years now, last November we moved to a bigger place so I decided to go from a 29 Eclipse to a 46 Bow-front. I've been collecting the equipment little by little, most second hand when I moved the livestock I was afraid of loosing the corals and I did most of them, mushrooms are quite hardy I learned as I have them still.
I set up the main tank with a Plenum following reading on the Jaubert system, my sump/fuge is a wet/dry modded with a plenum DSB area with macro algae an LR. I recently purchased a Korallin unit (not using yet) return via Mag 95 with ball valve
Lights 2X 250DE 14K (the cheap brand you may know which one) Skimmer is an old but reliable ER CS 5-3 and does a great job. Coralline algae already growing at a fast rate on the back glass and that I like.
Maintenance is every day, top it off manually, feeding, cleaning front glass. circulation via 2 MJ600 with Sureflo mod but no magnets PRICEY sold my two koralias 3 and 4 too much flow for a sugar fine sand bed, seemed like snowing on bikini bottom !!
I'd like to have mostly soft corals and polips/palys had some but they died on the move to the new place.
Cheers!