I was very surprised to receive the "invitation" from MaidstoneMarine for my tank to be featured in Tank of the Month. Wow, what an honour to be nominated, especially as my tank is not at its bristling best at the moment because of a pH crash a few months ago. This is in fact my second time as TOTM - my previous tank was featured back in 2005.

My current tank has now been running for 2 years. I won't bore you with all the build details. These can be found on my tank thread here

I'll concentrate this write up on the changes, improvements and disasters that have occurred in the past 2 years.

The main tank is 5' long x 3' wide and 30" tall, and it was built on site by Keith Windsor. The base is a single piece of 15mm float glass with the sides in 12mm. The tank is orientated as a room divider and is viewable from the 2 five foot sides and the 3 foot end panel. There is a single weir on one end with a 50mm drain.

The sump is housed in my garage which is detached from the house. The sump and main tank are connected by 2x 50mm pipes which run under the patio into the garage. The return pump is another Sequence 10,000 which also acts as the supply to my skimmer and frag tank.

Other equipment includes a very large DIY Calcium Reactor and phosban reactors for Phosphate remover and carbon. I also use an Aqua Medic 5000 twin skimmer

Main lighting is 2x 400 watt coralvue halide ballasts with Lumenarc reflectors and in each I use a BLV 10,000k halide lamp. The lighting is also supplemented with a mix of T5 actinics and Blue LED's. The actinics are 3x 24 watt.

The lighthing schedule is controlled by standard household timers with contactor being used on the halides.

All this is timed to switch on and off in the following sequence

LED's on 7:30am
T5's on 8:30am
Halide one on 12:00pm
LED's off 12:15pm
Halide two on 1:30pm
T5's off 2:00pm


T5's's on 7:00pm
LED's on 7:00pm
Halide one off 7:30pm
Halide two off 9:pm
T5's off 9:30pm
LED's off 10:00pm

Flow is provided by 2 closed loops. Each loop is powered by a Sequence 10000 supplying two outlets each. Flow from the four outlets is strong and causes massive turbulence on the water surface. Additional flow is provided by the Sequence 10000 return pump and two Tunze Stream 6060's. None of this flow is controllable and just runs 24/7.

The overall turnover within the tank is approximately 38x per hour.

The filtration on the tank is very straight-forward – rock and sand! There is approximately 100kg of live rock in the tank along with a 1.5’’ sand bed. In the sump there is a 3" DSB.

I use ozone for 3 hours a day to clarify and to a lesser extent "disinfect" the water. I also have a UV on standby in the event of any WS outbreaks.

Phosphate control is with 2 phosban 150 fluidised reactors filled with Rowaphos. Rowa is changed in one reactor alternately once a month. Finally, I use a 200 micron filter sock attached to outlet into the sump. The sock also has a 1 litre net bag of KZ carbon. The filter sock is replaced with a clean one weekly and carbon is replaced monthly.

The temperature is controlled by an ATC800 thermostat supplying 3x 300 watt titanium heaters. So far I have not needed to worry about cooling. The sump is housed in the garage and is connected by a long run of pipework. The garage remains cool through the summer and overheating has never been a problem.

Conversely, I have had big problems maintaining the temperature during the winter months. I originally had 1.2kw of heaters which on occasions was still not enough. I now use 900 watts of heating which is more than enough (even through the recent cold snap). This improvement is due to some insulation work I carried out in the summer months.

Calcium/mag/alk is kept in balance with the use of a DIY calcium reactor. The only supplement that I dose regularly is 1.8ml of Aqueous iodine once per week.

I have used various commercial supplements in the past and remain unconvinced of their value for money. i.e. benefits to the corals -v- cost. There has been no observable difference in the health or colouration of my SPS and LPS so decided that the money is best directed elsewhere such as regular water changes.

Automation
RO top up is the only automated feature. I suppose I could count the various cheap timers i use to switch lights on and off as automation as well.

My auto top up is a torbeck cistern valve attached to the side of my sump. This is gravity fed by a 35 gallon water butt raised about 6 feet off the ground in the garage. This system has proved to be totally reliable as it contains no electronic monitoring devices. The torbeck valve is all plastic and is so sensitive, that if you take a cup full of water out of my sump it will drip feed a cup full of RO to replace it. Credit for this idea goes to Kevin Douglas who recommended it to me.

Control
My Calcium Reactor is controlled by an Aqua Digital PH controller.

Monitoring
I use a Pinpoint pH meter to continuously monitor then tank pH and a Pinpoint ORP meter to monitor redox levels. As previously mentioned I run ozone on a low dose but it’s so low that I have not needed to use an ORP controller.

I use Salifert test kits to monitor nitrate, calcium, magnesium and alkalinity.

I feed the tank twice a day and with a high fish load I tend to feed a lot of frozen foods - mysis, krill, brine shrimp and chopped cockle. I buy 1kg frozen slabs and cut them into cubes with a bandsaw. Buying in bulk is cheaper and I got fed up of breaking my fingers trying to open those damned bubble packs.

I feed frozen in the mornings followed by a good pinch of flake or pellet in the afternoon.

My tank looks like a snow storm when I feed the frozen food. I have a pair of manderins’ and various gobies. The heavy feeding seems to keep them nice and plump.

Finally, a sheet of Nori is added once a week for the Yellow Tang and Powder Blue Tang. They usually have to do battle with the Algae blenny for it.

I do a 100 litre water change once a week which equates to about 8% of tank volume. My corals tend to complain if I stray from this routine, this is possibly due to the consequence of my feeding regime. My nitrates however have always remained below 5ppm in my system.

Tests of Dkh/Calcium/Mag/Nitrate are carried out monthly using salifert kits. I don’t measure Phosphate. I'm not convinced that Aquarium test kits are sufficiently accurate, so I tend to judge phosphate levels by the speed at which the glass greens up.

I maintain a strict regime of Rowaphos replenishment. I change the media in one reactor each month on an alternating basis. If I detect speedier greening of the glass or any change in growth or colour of SPS, I will change Rowaphos more frequently. So in essence, I'm letting the tank tell me when Phosphate is an issue rather than using test kits.

Carbon is replenished monthly.

My skimmer is an Aqua Medic 5000 twin. The cup is cleaned twice a week. I also clean the air venturi's about once a month.

That’s it apart from glass cleaning on average twice per week and the occasional blast of the live rock with a Turkey Baster to blast any detritus into suspension.

I've had a few problems since the system was set up 2 years ago, unfortunately, one or two of them have been of my own making. Here's a summary of what happened and the changes I have made as a result.

Heating
The biggest issue has been with heating in winter. As previously explained, the sump was a 5 x 2 x 2 tank in my detached garage. The garage is single brick, tiled roof with no insulation and in the winter it’s like a fridge. My original approach was to use cover glass on the sump and 1" polystyrene on the back and sides. This turned out to be woefully ineffective and I was using 1.2kw (4x300w) titanium heaters to maintain temperature. Even that wasn’t enough and I suffered temperature drops to near critical levels on frosty winter nights. My electricity bill for the winter quarter was the princely sum of 680. Something had to be done to save my marriage!! The cost of a divorce would be even higher than the electricity bill.

I considered insulating the garage but opted to change the glass sump for a plastic reef safe vat. Steve from Reef Dreams was able to acquire a 1000 litre vat from Plymouth aquarium which was ideal. The plan was to install this in a heavily insulated box which I constructed of 50mm King span. Suffice to say, it worked a treat. I’m now maintaining temperature with 900 watts of heating even through the January cold spell.

Computer control
I originally installed an IKS to control, lighting, heating, auto top up, calcium reactor. ORP etc, In short, my systems life support was entirely dependent on the IKS. It let me down several times through mysterious alarms being triggered and critical equipment switching off or staying on.. It got to the point where I just didn’t trust it. I eventually sold it and bought separates to control the key elements of my system.

The IKS was replaced by an

• An ATC800 to control heating
• Pinpoint meters to monitor pH and ORP.
• An Aqua digital pH controller to control the calcium reactor.
• Basic timers to control lighting.

The change also enabled me to dispense with about 10 miles of wiring.

pH crash
This has been my biggest disaster to date and was totally of my own making. As previously mentioned I run an AM5000 twin skimmer. The chamber is big and is prone to algae and coralline build ups. I decided it needed to be cleaned and Citric Acid did a fantastic job of doing so. Unfortunately, I must have failed to completely rinse away all traces of citric acid and when the skimmer was switched back on my ph crashed to 6.5. Several panic water changes later the pH recovered but next day I was greeted by the tank looking like warm milk. The skimmer went mad for several days filling the cup in minutes. I carried out a further series of water changes and feared the worst. I lost 95% of my SPS colonies and 4 fairy wrasses but thankfully all my LPS and other fish pulled through. I filled 3x 25kg salt buckets with coral skeleton and understandably I felt like giving up. That was in July 2008 and I am pleased with the way the system has recovered since then.

LED's
I have introduced some strings of blue LED's to replace 2 x 39w actinics. Whilst the LED's are not as bright as the T5's I have found them to be excellent at fluorescing some corals.

I love the challenge of SPS, and get satisfaction from a thriving and colourful SPS colony. However, I am useless at SPS identification and tend to use "common" names. In the past 12 months I have concentrated on building up a stock of LPS. My tank is probably overstocked with fish to for LPS/SPS to thrive, but I can’t imagine a reef tank without the fish.

Yellow Tang - I've had him for 6 years
Powder Blue Tang
Wrasses - These are my favourite fish - here's the list
- Goldback Wrasse x2
- Black Hat Pencil Wrasse - pair
- Peacock Wrasse
- Possum Wrasse x2
- Radiant Wrasse
- Rosy Scaled Wrasse

Twinspot Hogfish
Algae Blenny
BicolourBlenny
Squimmy Anthias x10
Manderin pair
Circus Goby
Sulphur Watchman goby paired with a Tiger Pistol shrimp

In the sump, I have 4 Convict Blennies. They are now 8-10" long. I'm hopeful of a spawning in the long term.

The tank is dedicated SPS and LPS. I'll let the photo's do the talking.

My clean up crew consists of

12+ Mexican Super turbo snails
5x urchins. Brilliant for keeping LR clear of coralline and maintains live rock performance
Pistol shrimps x2
RBTA just keeps splitting.

I intend to use this year to re-establish my SPS population, mainly from frags.

In line with the above, I will shortly be swapping over from my Calcium Reactor to the Balling Lite method using a GHL standalone doser. This will enable me to dispense with my DIY reactor, CO2 bottle, peri pumps and gauges. The Balling lite method is a tad more expensive and chemical balance within the aquarium should be easier than fine tuning a calcium reactor. I have spoken to many people who use balling and everyone of them have said they would never go back to using a calcium reactor.

I think the biggest impact on my reef keeping experience has been my involvement with Southern Marine Club. It is thriving, with 30+ active members now many of which I now class as good friends as well as club members. You just can’t put a value on the help and advice you can rely on in times of need. Life is so much easier when there are extra hands to assist with tank lifting or a bit of plumbing, not to mention coral and fish swaps. The benefit of the club was fully demonstrated when my pH crashed last year. It takes incidents like that to remind you of how valuable being a member of the club is.