Firstly I would like to say thank you to Ultimate Reef, all the moderators and members past present and future. I can't remember how many years ago it was that I joined U.R. but it has been a wealth of information and enjoyment to me and it was a privilege to be awarded tank of the month.

I first started fishkeeping when I was about six years old, my fisrt foray into marines at ten years old and my first reef tank over 22 years ago when I was 14.

A lot has changed in the hobby over those years but my fascination with the aquarium inhabitants has remained the same. Nowadays I am lucky enough to have turned my hobby into a business, I have tried many different husbandry techniques and the methods that I use now are what works for me. This reef aquarium is just one of my latest that was first set up in 2008.

The tank measures 60"x24"x24" and stands on a well made cabinet from Seashell Aquariums. I had decided to run the system with the Berlin method of live rock and protein skimming so needed the tank drilled with a hole to allow water to flow to a specially designed sump housed in the cabinet below. The sump measures 36"x16"x17" and has weirs built in to my specifications.

I have used lighting that I already had for this aquarium, namely a twin 250w Arcadia series pendant and T5 tubes. Four 54w T5 tubes were fitted close together in two reflectors, one for the front of the tank and one at the back. This was mainly done as the twin 250w halides did not provide enough light at the far ends of the tank due to the distance between the two lamps being too short. The two T5's at the rear of the tank are white tubes and the two at the front of the tank are actinic tubes. Although the actinic tubes provide very little PAR in comparison to the white tubes or halides they provide me with the opportunity to view the tank with just actinics on late in the evening and give a spectacular view of the fluorescing colours of some of the corals.

The lamps that I am using are BLV 250w 10,000 Kelvin, I am using 10K bulbs rather than 14K bulbs as they provide considerably more PAR and reproduce more of the natural spectrum of light found on reefs.

The tank has a volume of 540 litres plus about another 80 litres volume for the sump giving a total system volume of 620 litres, knock off around 100 litres for water displacement from the live rock and I have a working volume of 500 litres. When calculating the water turnover through the sump I work to a ten times turnover of water through the sump per hour, this means that for a 500 litre system you should move 5,000 litres of water through the sump and back to the tank each hour.

I wanted to use a submersible return pump rather than an external one so I went for the largest submersible Ocean Runner pump the OR6500 which would deliver a water flow rate of close to 5,000 litres per hour at the head height of 1.35m that I had. This would give me close to the ten times per hour turnover through the system that I wanted.

I also needed drainage piping running from the main tank back to the sump that could deal with a flow rate of 5,000 litres per hour. I use ABS rigid piping for my plumbing and for the return drainage use a size of 60.3mm outer diameter which can easily handle 5,000 litres per hour through it.

Personally I always use a system where the base of the tank is drilled and utilise a standpipe to set the water level in the tank. I do this for a number of reasons, by having the base of the tank drilled with a standpipe fitted rather than an overflow hole drilled into the side or back of the tank close to the water surface I am reducing the risks of the drainage system blocking and causing the tank to overflow. I rarely, if ever bother with weir systems built into the tank, I don't see any advantage to them and they take up a considerable amount of tank space without any real benefit. In this tank the standpipe is plumbed into the rear left hand corner of the tank.

One of the problems with systems that have drainage running to sumps below is how to stop fish and other animals getting sucked down the piping. To solve this problem I made a baffle out of egg crate that fits around the top of the standpipe and prevents any fish or snails ending up in the sump.

When running the water flows down the standpipe and into the first section of the sump and in this first section I placed a fairly large volume of bioballs. These bioballs were not to act as biological filtration, bioballs and the like do make very effective areas for colonisation of aerobic bacteria but only when they are run in large trickle-style systems. The surface area of the bioballs is not that large (in comparison to other media) and when submerged they are not a particularly effective filtration media. The reason that I used the bioballs in this section is two-fold. Firstly gaseous exchange, when the water enters the sump the water exits the pipe runs over a trickle tray over several inches of bioballs that are built up above the surface of the water. As the water passes over the bioballs it is split into tiny droplets that greatly enhances the gaseous exchange between the water and the atmosphere. This is very important as it allows soluble gases such as carbon dioxide and nitrogen to be released from the water into the atmosphere and without it you are relying mainly on items such as your protein skimmer to provide places for this gaseous exchange to occur. This gaseous exchange helps to maintain a higher pH as carbon dioxide gas is released from the water readily and the water is sure to be oxygen saturated once it has passed through this section.

The second reason for the bioballs is to act as a bubble stop. As the water plummets down the drain piping and is churned around it develops large amounts of minute micro bubbles that can easily flow through the sump and be pumped back up into the main tank. These micro bubbles can irritate your corals causing them to stress and release mucus and in addition the micro bubbles can be very unsightly. The bioballs help to prevent the micro bubbles from entering the next section of the sump.

The return pump is plumbed in with rigid ABS piping with an outer diameter of 33.4mm. A T-piece was inserted in the piping just above the pump that leads to a hosetail fitting so that at a turn of a valve water can be pumped out of the system for water changes. The return piping was also fitted with ball valves to control the flow of water back up to the main tank.

The return piping was split into two outlets in the main tank, one in the top right hand corner of the tank and the other in the top left hand corner. One of the safety aspects needed to be incorporated into the plumbing was to ensure that should the main pump ever fail then the water in the main tank does not back-siphon into the sump causing it to overflow. To prevent this happening the two water inlets in the main tank are positioned close to the waters surface so that should the main pump ever fail then only a limited amount of water can back-siphon into the sump.

For water movement in the tank I have two Seio Superflow pumps that have a flow rate of 10,000 litres per hour. This gives me a total of 25,000 litres per hour water movement in the main tank which is 50 times the volume turnover.

The system is set up with the Berlin filtration method and has 120kg of live rock in it and a shallow aragonite sand bed. The rock was bought uncured to ensure the maximum amount of life came with it and is arranged in a very open structure.

There is also a V2 1200 protein skimmer and once a month or so I run a little carbon for a few days.

To aid in cooling the system there is an extraction fan fitted in the cabinet and a fan mounted just bellow the halide lights blowing across the surface of the water.

Heating is by way of 300w of themostat/heater located in the sump.

This tank has no additives other than those to maintain calcium and alkalinity by way of a calcium reactor and Kalk stirrer and also magnesium by way of magnesium chloride.

The system has a calcium reactor controlled by a pH controller and monitor. This also monitors the pH in the main aquarium. Water lost via evaporation is replaced automatically using float switches and a peristaltic pump. The RO water is added via a Kalkwasser stirrer but the pH of my RO water is quite high so the kalkwassers solubility is limited.

In November 2008 a sample of the water was sent off for laboratory analysis to find the trace element levels. The table shows the results.

The fish are fed once to twice a day on a mix of frozen foods. The system is also fed Phytofeast Live every day.

Water changes are now performed every one to two weeks when 15% of the tank volume is changed. An automatic water change system has been built in to the system which means that the water changes can be performed by simply turning valves.

The corals are now having to be regularly pruned due to their growth, several colonies have been removed to make more space and some new ones have gone in over the last few months.

There have been few problems with this system.

Two Pistol shrimps came in as juveniles on the live rock, I have managed to catch and remove one but the other remains!

My Yellow Tang has developed a taste for the blue Cespitularia and keeps biting off the polyp heads.

Over the last couple of months there has been some cyanobacteria on the substrate but this is now clearing up.

Almost all of the corals in this system were first added as frags from the Reefworks coral farm in April 2008. Quite a few of the corals that have grown have been removed to leave space for others or else quite heavily pruned. The photographs are taken over a range of dates from August 2008 to April 2009.

SPS Corals
Acropora (Bali Slimer)	Acropora selago	Acropra desalwi
Acropora horida	Acropora microphthalma	Acropora valenciennesi
Acropora grandis	Acropora millepora	Bottlebrush Acropora (3 spp)
Green staghorn Acropora	Acropora lokani	Blue-tipped Acropora
Staghorn Acropora	Digitate Acropora	Montipora capitata
Montipora digitata orange	Montipora undata	Montipora digitata silver
Montipora foliosa	Montipora danae	Montipora mollis
Montipora circumvallata	Montipora capricornis	Montipora tuberculosa
Montipora orientalis	Montipora crassituberculata	Montipora stellata
Montipora hirsuta	Seriatopora histrix	Pocillopora damicornis
Pocillopora damicornis	Stylophora pistillata Pink	Stylophora pistillata Green
	Porites cylindrica

LPS Corals
Archelia horrescens	Echinopora lamelosa	Fungia
Blastomussa wellsi	Blastomussa merleti	Pachyseris gemmae
Turbinaria reniformis	Duncanopsammia axifunga	Caulastrea furcata
Alveopora	Euphyllia paradivisa

Soft Corals
Yellow Gorgonian	Gorgonian	Purple Gorgonian
Ricordea yuma	Cespitularia	Zooanthinds
Anthelia	Sarcophyton trocheliophorum	Tubipora musica
Star polyps	Tonga Blue Mushrooms	Florida Ricordea

Fish
Whipfin fairy wrasse	Fairy wrasse	Mandarin goby (x2)
Regal Tang	Yellow Tang	Unicorn Tang
Randals shrimp goby	Potters Angel	Cook Island Damsel
Purple Firefish	Splitfin Anthias	Gecko Goby or White Tiger Goby Priolepis nocturna

Invertebrates
	Cleaner Shrimp

I find that sticking to the basics of running a good Berlin system works wonders. I do not find that I need to add trace elements (these are usually excessively high in salt brands anyway), nor do I add any other 'miracle' additives for coral colouration or foods for the corals.

A calcium rector is essential in my opinion for this type of system, as are regular partial water changes.

The system has never had any detectable nitrates or phosphates (even though the skimmer is not particlarly powerfull), this is due to having the correct amount of live rock, good water movement and not overstocking/feeding.

There are a number of people that I would like to thank, TMC - particularly Wayne and George, Rob at Marine Lighting, ALF, and of course...............everybody on Ultimate Reef.