Hi! I would first like to thank you all for putting my tank forward for Tank of the Month. It was a total shock! I have been keeping fish most of my life it started with tropical's, then discus, and now marines which has been for the last eight years.

My current tank came about after my previous 7ft tank was cracked in a house move about 1 year ago. Everything went into large vats and the stock stayed there until I could source another tank. I did lose a few bits of stock during this time but I managed to source a bare tank with nothing with it and the process of rebuilding my marine tank started all again. I was fortunate to reuse all the existing pipe work and equipment on my newly sourced tank.

The tank had been running a year when it was decided that the tangs were getting to large for the different shaped system I had so the tank had a massive rescape and the tangs moved on to a larger system.

The tank was a bare tank which was drilled right hand back corner, a weir was fitted with a single durso running down into the sump. The tank is 54 " long, 30" wide and 24" high and the cabinet is hand-made of wood construction and painted white with white gloss doors. I choose white because it was a nice clean bright colour. The cabinet houses a sump that is 36" long, 16" wide and 16" high .

Despite this being a smaller tank than my last I manage to transfer everything from my 7ft tank into this one.

The lights are an Aqua One twin 150 watt 14k halide light with 4 twin 24 watt actinics. The unit is suspended from the ceiling and hangs 7" above the water level. Since using this light I am very pleased with the colour of the tank and its inhabitants especially with the light that comes off the actinics.

LIGHTING TIMES

Blue actinics go on at 9.00 am
White halides go on at 10.00 am

White halides go off at 9.00 pm
Blue actinics go off at 10.00 pm

The circulation consists of 2x Koralia 4 which are rated at 4,600 lph. I did originally have 2x Tunze 6060s but they made the tank look like a sand storm so it was decided to replace them with the Koralia. I tried lots of different placements for the powerheads and finally settled on this set up as with the different rock layout I wanted to get as much flow around the tank without blowing the sand everywhere .

Also there is flow from an external filter which is an Aqua One 1250 and the return from the sump which is an Eheim 1262, this is tapped off very slightly so I'm roughly getting about 3300 lph through the sump.

The filtration is a combination of a few things! I used to have 80 kilos of liverock and I always struggled with my nitrates so I removed approximately 50 kilos of rock and the large fish! I kept about 30 kilos in the tank which then really opened up the tank view.

I run a Deltec APF 600 skimmer with the feed pump in the first section of the sump. There are 3 sorts of algae in the sump with a few handfuls of liverock rubble that is lit with twin 24 watt lights which are on at 8.00 am -10.00 pm.

There is a Deltec fr509 phosphate reactor which is filled with Ultiphos. I change this media every 2 months. A small internal filter just to polish the water up just before it goes back into the tank is also run. In addition to the sump I also have an external filter with sponges and media which is set up in the main tank.

Heating is done with a 300 watt heater in the sump, which is connected to my Aquatronica. This regulates the heater on and off to keep it between 26.0 - 26.4. Should the temperature rise above this I have a habistat cool control set up with two fans. This is set up in the cabinet and they are positioned pointing towards the sump which helps to regulate the temperature extremely well.

I do a weekly water change of 60 litres and other than mantaining my magnesium and kh levels I do not add anything else into the tank.

I am running an Aquatronica control panel with two plug bars at the moment ,which run my level sensor, my temp and my sump lights.

I also run an Aqua Medic sp3000 niveaumat auto top up which fingers crossed has not failed on me.

I feed my fish 3 cubes of frozen food once a day. I let it defrost in a small medicine tub before I give it to them, it is spread around more evenly. I also have started feeding my fish nori once a day, as I feel it helps with the colouration on my 3 tangs. I feed the fish 1 prawn cube, 1 mysis cube and 1 krill cube.

My maintenance consists of a weekly 60 litre water change with reef crystals which is usually done on a Sunday. This also includes cleaning the glass at the back, changing filter floss and checking the pumps are not blocked .

My skimmer cup is cleaned every 3-4 days
My carbon is changed monthly.
The phosphate reactor media is changed every 2 months.
The external filter has a full strip down and clean every 3 months.

Apart from the cracked tank I have not had any major problems with it! I have had a few aptasia but its has not been too much of a problem.

An issue I have encountered was with the SPS corals as they just would not grow. Following the tank rescape I've tried with these again and so far they are doing very well.

My liverock was reduced and this has dropped my nitrates down dramatically, so I think it was to do with a few small things, but other than that I have not had any serious problems.

My livestock consists of a bit of everything!

I really like the weird stuff and that's why I buy things like sea apples, basket starfish and firework anemones.

My fish are a bit of everything although I have removed the larger tangs and replaced them now with smaller ones.

The fish at present are :-

Longnose Hawkfish	Scarlet HawkFish	Powder Brown Tang
Scopas Tang	Regal Tang	3x Lyretail Anthias
Bluecheek Goby	4x Pyjama Cardinals	2x Orange Clownfish
Black & White Clowns	2x Blue Damsels	Peacock Wrasse
Dot Dash Blenny	Scooter Blenny	Royal Gramma
2 Mandarins (male and female)	Fuzzy Dwarf Lionfish

I like to have a variety of different corals from soft to lps and am now trying sps corals.
Corals consist of:-

blue tip acropora	purple tip acropora	green trumpet
fluorescent green trumpet	lobophyllia	elegance with purple tips
galaxia	various coloured zoas	green gonipora
turbinia	green bubblublle tip	pipe organ coral
colt coral	green star polyps	green leather coral
various mushrooms and ricordia	corky sea fan	knobby sea fan
spiny sea fan	purple sea plumes

The invertebrates that i have are :-

2x Cleaner Shrimps	1x Boxing Shrimp	3x Sandsifting Starfish
1x Banded Starfish	1x Red Short Spined Brittle Starfish	1x Blue Linked Starfish
3x Basket Starfish	1x Black Brittle Starfish	1x Red Brittle Starfish
1x Orange Marble Starfish	1x Orange Starfish	1x Tuxedo Urchin
1x Pink Urchin	2x Sea Apples	2x desera clams
3x coco worms	2x firework anemone	1x malu anemone

Hopefully there is still room for improvement and maybe one day a different size tank, but who knows probably have to do a lot of grovelling first!

I just really enjoy this hobby and am always looking to change or improve something. I like to keep learning from this hobby and everyday brings a new challenge.

I would like to thank my wife Jackie, my daughter Krystal and my son Callum for putting up with me, with all the fish talk and all the wet floors!

I would like to thank Julie and family & Craig at CRA for all the time they have had to listen and put up with me, also the stock you get in as it would not be the tank it is today .
Thanks to Mark (firethief) and Kenny (tyvex)and the rest of the scottish reefers.

Thanks to everyone on Ultimate Reef for letting me show my tank and thanks to all the people who look at it. Hope you like it as much as I do!