Well firstly I would like to say Wow and thank you very much to all people who voted for my tank. It is a great honour to be up there with all the great stunning tanks that make TOTM such an achievement to reach. It makes all the effort and hard work all worth it.

I have always fancied a fish tank since I was about 14 years old and seeing pictures of clown fish in magazines and being amazed by there stunning colours compared to the tropical tanks i used to see around.


But it was not until 2004 when I walked into TAC when I was just passing and seen all there amazing fish and corals, and chatted to Mark about whether going straight to marines was possible now with the advancement in filtration etc, so I purchased a book on marine keeping and read it cover to cover.

Head full of info and still not a clue what I was on about, I went with hard earned cash and ordered my first tank, which was a 4ft x 2ft x 2ft tank with a Aquamedic riff 500 as the main filter component. The tank worked okay and I had a few fish and easy corals, but I knew I could never take this one where I wanted to go so an upgrade was planned.

Being a furniture maker by trade, the tank and cabinet had to look good together so I designed an American black walnut cabinet to match exact needs of house as looks goes, and inside to be able to take all the equipment and sump, top up tanks etc .The result is a very different feel to the usual cabinets u see in the shops and sets everything off in the tank nicely, as well as sitting very nicely in the lounge as more of a bit of furniture rather than a fish tank stand.

My current system is now exactly 2 yrs old and is basically a straight forward berlin set up. About 50kg of live rock, skimmer, calcium reactor are the core components.

The tank is 72"x24"x27" with a central weir, feeding the sump via two 32 mm pipes.

The sump is 50"x18"x12" and runs quite shallow with only 4" water depth as this is to take any back syphoned water if there should be a power cut and not to rely on non return valves or syphon breaks etc.

The lighting for my tank started of with twin Arcadia 150 w halides from my old tank which were ok but just meant the ends of the tank were a bit shaded but fine for softies etc. As my corals leaned towards more LPS, SPS etc I thought about upgrading them but never wanted the electric bills that go with triple halides.

So I added a Retro twin T5 light unit from marine lighting that consisted of two 84 w tubes one 10,000k white and one 84 w blue actinic which really done the job and corals and tank looked great.

Lighting period
T5's 11.30 am - 9.00 pm
Halides 12.30 pm - 8.30 pm
54w blue actinic 9.00 pm - 10.00 pm

The water movement is kept very simple and is done by two Tunze turbelle streams 6100's on a multi-controller, which are fantastic bits of kit and worth their hefty price tag.

After the hassle of owning my first tank, a 4ftx2ftx2ft tank which worked really badly and was impossible to get to equipment to service easily, I was determined to have a well laid out sump system with easy access to all various equipment, right down to shut off valves either side of pumps etc so i can remove for cleaning and turn off for water changes etc.

The tank has a central weir which is fed by two Aquamedic 3500 pumps and delivered to sump via two 32mm pipes, the skimmer is connected straight up to one of these with a bypass arrangement for water control into skimmer, the excess taken into filter floss carbon etc.

I was very keen to filter in this way, having heard and read that gravity feeding skimmers straight from water surface being a very efficient way. So I needed a skimmer capable of handling a large amount of water and with a 32mm inlet feed straight into it, so the Aquamedic turbo 5000 shorty 2 was the perfect choice.

Phosphate is removed using a Phosban reactor 150 filled with 250ml rowaphos and changed every 4 weeks.

Biological filtration is carried out within 50kg rock and sand, calcium and KH are kept stable with an Aquamedic 1000 calcium reactor, with CO2 control taken care of by an Aqua digital Ph controller which does make control of a reactor very good.

These are kept very simple to be honest, with just one visitherm 300 watt heater in sump positioned next to pump uptakes, which only comes on in the coldest days of winter. And, two clip on 9" fans each end of the hood on timers to keep tank cool.

Summer temp between 26.5c - 28c
Winter temp between 25c - 26c

Again I try to keep this simple as the calcium reactor keeps KH, calcium stable which I used to add manually before.

I dose 2 drops of lugols solution once a week, and add Labpaks magnesium chloride/sulphate at a mix 6-1 when needed.

I also have grotechs ABC trace elements just so I know that I am adding all elements when I do add them, which I do every now and again.

For this I use a tunze auto top system for evaporated water which is very good and saves a lot of messing about with jugs of water. I have a redox computer which used to run a nitrate filter but is off line at the moment. The probe of unit sits in sump and monitors redox rather than just doing nothing, so it’s a good double check of water quality and bit of a luxury rather than anything else.

I feed the fish new era flake (marine and herbivore) and at weekends I feed 3 cubes of frozen mysis, brineshrimp, marine mix – all defrosted and washed before adding to tank.

The corals get fed once a week just before lights go out with coral frenzy and coral vibrance. I target feed Catalaphyllia, lobo and bubble with lancefish once every 1-2 weeks.

Shrimps get a treat of cockle in a shell when I do this so they don't steal corals food!!

I try to be quite strict with tank maintenance, I carry out a 10% water change once a month using seachem reef salt about 70 litres are changed.

Skimmer cup is cleaned once a week along with all mechanical filtration such as sponges, floss etc.

Rowaphos is changed once a month, and carbon is changed every 2 months running continuously between changes. Every couple of weeks I clean back of tank with a long handled scraper and blast the rock work with a powerhead to remove any detritus etc.

Once a year I strip down all return pumps, clean and service them. The skimmer is also removed - taken all apart and totally cleaned out, usually performed in the bath as the sinks not big enough! The Vectron U.V. has its bulb changed every 6 months, and halides and T5's are changed yearly.

I also keep a diary which I use to record tank readings and keep track of changing media dates.

Luckily this tank has run fairly well from the start. I think all my mistakes and learning was done on my previous setup. I have had the usual problems - cyno, bryopsis, hair algae etc, but I have learnt with patience, time and good husbandry regarding water quality etc, things usually sort themselves out in the end. Panicking doesn't really solve much apart from annoying yourself and fish!

The biggest worry I had was a year ago when I added 2 yellow tangs and an emperor tang. I already had a Regal tang and one yellow tang in there and fish were introduced with fairly little conflict to be honest. But after a few days everything was covered in whitespot and I was terrified as I lost a whole tank in a weekend with my old system. I went into battlestations, and got some New era ageis 1 flake food to boost immune system, borrowed an ozone unit and hit tank with 60mg of ozone for 20mins a day for 2 wks and just hoped and waited.

With all this and keeping water quality good, hands out of tank and UV I didn't lose a single fish and today they are some of the fattest tangs I have seen.

The fish stocking is kept fairly low, I find that this way that the filtration isn't working so hard and I can run media, i.e. rowaphos and carbon etc just that little bit longer, and perform smaller water changes, and everything is not just hanging in the balance so much.

2x Yellow Tangs
1x Emperor Tang (bought about the size of a fifty pence piece)
1x Regal Tang (bought again very small)
A pair of Percula Ocelaris Clowns
3x anthias (1 male 2 females Scalefin/lyretail)
1x twinspot Hogfish
1x Lamarck Angel

This tank is not dominated by any species really and is true mixed reef tank with softies, lps, sps, zoas, gorgs etc.

I like the mix of all the corals, the movement softies give, the colours of the SPS, and the stunning polyps on LPS. I also have bought very many of my corals as frags or free from club meets and just grown them out over time rather than buying big corals, which I think is much more rewarding in the long term.

In the tank are the following

Hard corals
Pocillopora Damicornis, Seriatopora hysterix, variuos Acros Staghorns, Nana, Valida, Millipora green red begie, Gonipora green and red, Monti's, Green pavona, Euphyllia ancora and glabrescens, catalaphyllia jardeinei, hydnophora, favia, lobo's, caulastrea

Soft corals
Cladiella, sarcophyton,lobophtytum, sinularia,purple frilly gorg, pseudoterogorgia, blue orange mushrooms.

Pair of cleaner shrimp, various snails.

Apart from adding maybe a few more small colourful fish, and maybe a few more choice corals if I can find space!

I just want to sit back enjoy the tank, keep on top of all maintenance, and watch it really grow out some more to be honest ,and mature into a really well established tank.

There are no plans at the moment for another tank bigger or smaller, I would not go any bigger than the one I have at the moment anyway as the rising cost of energy and general upkeep of a bigger tank would distract from the pleasure of keeping a tank I think, I suppose that’s depends on how deep your pockets are I guess.

If I were to do another system I would almost certainly do a tank in the wall, I have seen two really nice ones on my travels one in Kent and the other in Yeovil, and love the fact u get no hum, back ground noise etc and just the way they look to be honest, just like a moving picture on the wall.

To have made this possible I have to thank the West Country Reef club for all the advice and support in my earlier days, and especially to Muzzy for all the great frags over the last couple of years.

Also to my wife and children for maybe looking at my backside hanging out of tank cabinet just a little to often and putting up with constant fish talk.

Also a big thanks to Simon at Exeter Aquatics for all the sound advice over the years it really helps when you can have a chat to someone who has been doing it over a long period of time and get some long term experience advice, cheers Simon.

Clarie/Ben at the Rare Ocean for some great corals fish etc.

And thanks to Mark at Taunton Aquarium centre for setting me up with the tank I designed from the start of it all.

A big thank you to Snowsurfer for great photos - thanks Matt.

And to all the advice from you guys (and girls!) on UltimateReef.