Like a lot of fish keepers we started out with someone else’s cast off goldfish, won at a fair, kept in a bowl and finally tormented by their cat. We took them on and bought them a proper tank with a filter and a few friends. After a couple of years, once we had our own place we built them a 2500L pond, where they still are to this day. What to do with an empty tank? We moved onto community tropicals and eventually upgraded to a Rio 240 and Discus. Once the Discus were in and settled, Roddy turned his attention to Marines. I was very sceptical at first, balking at the expense and difficulty (did I mention we have Discus???) and it was a long time before I was convinced that we really needed another fish tank in the house. Our first reef was a 36”x15”x18” tank run on the Berlin system with a Prizm skimmer and 5x T8 tubes crammed into the hood. We ran it for about 18 months, making lots of mistakes on the way (tap water, HORRIBLE hair algae, I did mention the Prizm skimmer...). We upgraded the lighting to MH and that was the beginning of the end for the 150L reef and the start of our present day ecosystem tank.

By this time we had discovered Ultimate Reef and took part in the inaugural Scottish Reefers meeting. Seeing other big tanks and going on shop tours to Calico and UDA meant we had a lot more corals and needed a bigger tank.

Roddy decided to go the Ecosystem route which was just taking off around that time, we designed the system and ordered a 48”x24”x24” Seabray tank from UDA in Fife. The tank arrived in Spring 2003 and has been running as an ecosystem tank ever since.

Main tank: 48 inch long x 24 inch high x 24 inch wide, corner weir fitted with a 40mm durso and 25mm return.

Sump tank: 36 inch x18 inch x15 inch mud based (We used Kent Biosediment) sump, with bioballs and caulerpa.

Homemade reef clean system.

Arcadia 2 x 250w halide fitted with DE 14000k BLV’s changed every 12 months

Converted Garden security light, fitted with 150w 20000k coralvue lamp, changed infrequently(18months-2 years).

2 x 40w T8 actinics

Sump: 80w ASL power compact unit on 24/7

Lights come on; 12 o’clock actinic, 1pm 150w, 2pm 2x250w until 10pm when they shut down in reverse order.

• 1 x Tunze 6080 hidden in rockwork pointing under Live Rock as part of reef clean system.
• 1 x Tunze 6100 on controller 30-50%
• 1 x Eheim 1262 return pump, runs back up through weir to opposite end of tank where it retuns just below the surface.

Total turnover 33x total tank volume

The tank was set up based upon the ecosystem method. We chose to use a fairly traditional style sump with bioballs before and after the mud bed. We also have some Kent Biomax media in the first compartment as we had it lying about at the time. The refugium part of the sump is approx 12 inches x15 inches and has about 4 inches of Kent Biosedimet in the bottom, half of which has been replaced once in 5 years. The caulerpa in the refugium is a strange form which grows in a 1 inch thick matt floating on the surface. It totally covers the space provided and it is thinned out approximately once a month. The caulerpa is lit by an ASL 80w power compact unit fitted with plant tubes. It is on 24/7.

We have only ever run a skimmer on this system for 2 weeks when the tank was about 1 year old. We had grape caulerpa at the time which had predictably gone sexual and spread itself up into the main tank. We ran the skimmer to remove the gametes and try and stop the grape caulerpa going nuts. It eventually covered most of the tank but was eventually dealt with by a hungry two bar rabbit fish.

The tank contains about 80kg of liverock sitting on an island of egg crate, with a marley waste platform that allows us to have a bit of height and a large void under the Live Rock. The Tunze 6080 points down into the void space in an attempt to stop detritus build up.

We use a Cleartides duo reactor which contains both Ultiphos and Carbon. Both are usually changed once a month and quantities are kept low to avoid waste.

Up until recently we have always used a standard visitherm in the sump. However, this summer, which wasn’t particularly warm we had difficulty keeping the temp below 29C. After adding extra fans the problem was eventually rectified when we found that the heater was stuck on. We now use a titanium heater with its own controller. Cooling is carried out by a 5 pound B&Q fan and 3x 4” PC fans controlled by a highland weather station (now defunct) temperature controller. System runs at 25/26C.

We use a Korallin 1501, filled with ARM to supply Ca and Alk. We do not any other supplements.

• Highland Weather Station Thermometer/Controller
• Pinpoint pH meter
• 5 pound water spill alarm
• Top up is controlled by a Plymouth Tropical Marine float switch which activates an Aquadoser 200 peristaltic pump.

The fish are fed 4 times a day from an Eheim auto feeder filled with Ocean nutrition flake, New Era Aegis Flake and cyclopezee. They occasionally get some frozen brine, mysis or discus mix depending on what the Discus are having that day! Occasional feeds of Golden Pearls and Cyclopezee after lights out to feed corals. The herbivores get a small piece of supermarket nori every few days.

We carry out 20% fortnightly water changes using either Reef Crystals or Red Sea Coral Pro made up to 1.025. Rowa reactor cleaned approx. Once per month, pumps cleaned every 3 months or so. Caulerpa harvested once a month.

Mushrooms, mushrooms, mushrooms
Like most people we started off with easy corals which invariably means mushrooms. We have green, purple and red mushrooms. The red and purple prefer shade and don’t grow too quickly but the green ones are everywhere and grow like weeds. Most of our SPS have mushrooms attached to their bases, stinging the life out of them. We once moved our prized Favia onto a rock at the back of the tank and within days the mushrooms had destroyed a 1 inch band around the bottom. We haven’t found any useful methods of control and rue the day they ever went into an SPS dominated tank.

Low alkalinity
Our first calcium reactor was a KnopC reactor; quite small for a 100g tank. This lasted for about a year when we finally bit the bullet and upgraded to a Korallin 1501. Much to our disappointment the alkalinity stayed worryingly low at dKH 5 to 6. We added a peri pump and solenoid pH controller and tried to increase the flow to keep up with demand but we found the harder we drove the reactor the more growth we got and we had and still very low alkalinity. After shelling out for a lid that allowed the pH probe to be fitted inside the chamber we have never looked back. The reactor is much easier to set up after a media change, the KH sits at a steady dKH8, Ca 420 and pH has risen from 7.8 to 8.0 to 8.0 to 8.3. Perfect!

Asterinas
We are currently experiencing our second plague of asterina star fish. Started out with a slow growing small, peach centred one which was never any problem and was only ever noticed on the glass. Introduced a larger grey centred starfish on a frag and it has take off somewhat. They get quite big (1cm) and breed like rabbits. Our purple corraline algae is currently somewhat patchy in appearance as there are thousands of them on the rock again. We did have a beautiful harlequin shrimp who we assumed had cleaned out the tank, we passed him on to another reefer and are currently wishing we could get one back!!

Stand
Unfortunately after 5 years of leaks, spills and mishaps the melamine faced chipboard stand has had it. Thankfully there is a real wood frame holding up the front where the majority of the damage has occurred. This is the main driver for our planned upgrade in 2008. It just isn’t going to last much longer.

Stocking level is very low. We currently have only 9 fish in our tank. We started off with a shoal of 11 anthias but this has slowly dwindled over time to 2. We tried introducing more but they just killed off the newcomers. The Pyjama Wrasse is a Holy Terror and has bullied and harassed a fair few fish to death. He is lovely though.... We have tried and failed to keep chalk bass (all jumped) a stunning McKosker’s fairy wrasse (hid for two weeks, had him for about 2 months then jumped), We did have a male ocelaris clown but the female battered him to death, court jester gobies, were terrorised by PJ hid in the corner and slowly starved to death. Lost a kole tang and purple tang to unknown causes (there one day gone the next) and a few blennies (bicolour and pinkspot) to the PJ wrasse. Now you know why we only have 9 fish, it’s not worth the hassle, corals are much nicer!!!

We started off in our 3’ tank with all the easy softies, zoos, mushrooms, leather fingers and green star polyps. Only the green star polyps and the dreaded mushrooms made it over in to the 4’ ecosystem. Quite early on and by accident we started buying LPS. We have a favia brain coral that started off smaller than a tennis ball that now weighs about 3kg. We traded some xenia for a sorry looking lobophilia in a LFS that had punctured its skeleton. We had to stop feeding it in the end as it eats whole prawns and is cracking on for the size of a dinner plate. We also managed to keep a goniapora alive and thriving for 4 years. Sadly in the last year it has gone the way of captive goniaporas everywhere and is now shrinking away to nothing in the sump.

Most of our SPS were grown from snaps, small frags or aqua cultured colonies. The only large colony that we purchased was a cat’s paw and it is now HUGE.

We have a basic cleanup crew consisting of turbo snails, red legged hermits and dove snails. We also have a cleaner shrimp. We have 3 large clams all bought as small 5cm specimens. The two maximas are stunning viewed from above and the deresa is approx. 30cm long and 20 cm wide when open.

We were so happy to be picked as TOTM as we are very proud of our little box of coral. The timing is perfect as due to the problems with the stand we are in the planning stages of an upgrade so the tank won’t be around for much longer. We are really happy with the long term results of the ecosystem method and hope that our new tank will carry on in the same vein.

Thank you to those who nominated us, it was an honour to be included in TOTM with crazy big tanks and super high tech systems. Thanks to the Scottish Reefers, especially to Mandy, Manta, Jimbo and Mark-c- who have become good friends and priceless tank sitter emergency contacts.