Overview

My first reef, close to a year old now.

The Tank

After being involved with a planted tank community and running my own planted setup for three years, I made the unfortunate and costly mistake of looking into reef aquariums. I was hooked immediately by the beauty and challenge of keeping a reef, as well as being drawn to the unlimited possibilities of reef gadgetry. In March of 2008 I began this tank, after several months of reading and planning.

It has been a learning experience to say the least. I have had ups and downs with my corals, and a move to a new apartment during the summer of 2008 put me backwards a little bit. Lately I have been struggling with red bugs and what I believe to be zoa pox, but I am in this hobby for the long haul and believe that I am always making forward progress with my ability to keep corals healthy.

Lighting

150 watt Sunpod metal halide.

Heating & Cooling

Heating is provided by a 150 watt titanium heater. A cooling fan is mounted to blow under the halide. Both are controlled by a Reef Keeper II, which turns on the heater below 78.5F and engages the cooling at 80.5F

Filtration

Filtration is provided by a Tunze Nano skimmer and an Aquaclear 110 hang on filter running carbon and liverock rubble.

Circulation

Vortech MP-20

Maintenance, Feeding and Supplementation

I try to do a 4 gallon waterchange weekly, using Seachem Reef salt. With the low calcium demands of my tank this keeps paramters steady throughout the week.

I have experimented with the Zeo additives, as well as some from Seachem (amino acids in particular) but have found them to be generally unnecessary.

Frozen rotifers and/or coral frenzy is fed once or twice a week, and the fish eat flake and freeze dried mysis shrimp, with frozen foods additionally added a few times per week.

Fish

• 1x Nemateleotris decora, purple firefish
• 2x Amphiprion ocellaris, tank raised clownfish
• 1x Chromis viridis, blue chromis (sole survivor of a group of 5)

Corals

• LPS
  • Caulastrea curvata, trumpet coral
  • Caulastrea furcata, candycane coral
  • Fungia repanda, short tentacle plate
  • Brain coral, possibly favite
• SPS
  • Several formations of encrusting and plating Montipora
  • Turbinaria, cup coral
  • A few Acropora frags and a medium Pocillopora colony that are barely hanging on
• Polyps and soft corals
  • Several colonies of Zoanthus that have suffered the pox, apparently
  • Xenia, doing quite well
  • Briareum sp., green starburst polyps

There are a few others I will update at some point.

Invertebrates

• Nerite snails
• Blue and red legged hermit crabs
• 1x peppermint shrimp

Should be noted that with that cleanup crew of snails and hermit crabs in place since the tank cycled, I've not once experience nuisance algae in this tank, knock on wood. I've had plenty of other problems, but thankfully algae has not been one of them.