my first salt water tank
 

after reading threw alot of post on this site and others my wife when out and bough me a 90 gallon tank for fathers day .she and my daughter surprised me today when i was told to go pick it up /hehe .i was going to go get it drilled but found out its tempered glass and the lfs will not let her return it .after doing some more reading i saw overflows for sale .do these work ?i was looking at a eshoppe type one and a cpr one .like the cpr one .my tank will be live rock and the wife like corrals so want try easy ones at first .will i need a overflow with sump or can i just go liverock/protin skimmer and powerhead .thanks

A sump is better. But you have a lot more plumbing. On the plus side, more water, the skimmer can go into the sump, so a cleaner looking display. Part of the sump could be a refugium, where macro algae can grow, so that takes out nutrients
Well worth it in my opinion.
If money is tight, you could put the sump in afterwards.

Is every piece of glass that your tank is made of tempered or just the bottom? Usually its just the bottoms and if thats the case you could still get a hole drilled for an overflow through the back or maybe one of the sides...

My number one recommendation to anyone setting up a reef tank is get your tank drilled for a sump. Hang on overflows are a bit of a pain to run and definitely cost more than drilling. Recommendation number two is buy a good book.

after finaly finding red coral today and talking to them decided ill not use a rear overflow .going go with sand and live rock only .so today i put in some black sand and about 70 lbs of live rock i had cureing .still thinking ill try some easy corals like mushrooms .am useing a duel t5 light for now .anyone know a good book to read about corals and now to keep them?or a good web site for a total beginner at corals.thanks

Various book recommendations: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-01/tips/index.php

Aquarium Corals by Borneman

There are many articles on that site about everything reef related. Here is their index for all of their 'coral' articles. http://reefkeeping.com/issues/subject/corals.php