Thank you to everyone who has voted for my tank to become TOTM.

This tank was set up to grow some corals out for a planned hole in the wall upgrade – that was about two years ago and I’m still no closer to the upgrade!

The tank is located in the garage where I can create as much mess as I like without upsetting the wife. I am an SPS junky, I love seeing corals grow and colours develop.

The main aim was to create a system that would be low maintenance and need as little input from me as possible. I think I have reached this goal.

My build thread is located here: http://www.ultimatereef.net/forums/showthread.php?t=412644

The tank measures 60 inch long, 30 inch wide and is 19 inch high, it is made from 10mm glass with black silicone, I used N&D aquatics to custom make to this size for me.

I made the stand myself, which is an un-clad wood structure.

As an add on I have since added two 3 foot by 3 foot frag tanks which give me 18 square foot of frag space. Some of the corals are now touching the edges of the glass, so I either frag them by hand or the mag-float does so when I clean the glass.

I have three 25 gallon Wickes header tanks which function as my sumps. Total system volume is about 1000 litres.

The tank started off with twin 250w halides in lumenarc reflectors. However the price of new halide bulbs went up too much (over 80 quid each for 250w reeflux at the time I was looking) so it made me explore other lighting options. That is when I decided to go for T5 lights. My light unit is not designed for aquatic use; it is a Maxigrow Lightwave 8x54w T5 unit which is designed for horticulture. These units cost 145 quid and even come with tubes, so it was cheaper to buy an entire new light unit rather than replace the halide bulbs.

I can now honestly say I love T5 lights, the choice of tubes is huge! I have boxes of tubes which I have played with, I have used various unbranded T5 tubes (narva blue, Phillips, GE, Sylvania etc) and to date I have used a few different aquatic branded tubes, which include KZ Fiji purple, KZ super blue and AM 15k white and AM blue tubes. I frequently play with the mix of tubes to see what effect the tube combinations have on immediate visual appearance and longer term, coral pigmentation and growth.

I am currently running, from back to front:

Narva blue
KZ Fiji purple
AM 15k white
KZ super blue
AM 15k white
Narva blue
KZ Fiji purple
Narva Blue

I am very pleased with the above mix of tubes.

Phillips used to offer a 17k 54w T5 tube which was awesome. The tubes I am most impressed with are the KZ Fiji purple and Narva blue tubes. I have used both Aquamedic blue tubes and KZ super blues to compare and, the Narva blue tubes will be my first choice for blue tubes, as they produce very similar results to branded blue tubes at a fraction of the price. Unbranded tubes start at just over 2 quid each.

I am very pleased with the results that I have got using T5 tubes; I think they produce superior colours within the coral tissue due to the colour temperature and very broad coverage with hardly any shaded areas; so more of the coral’s surface area is subjected to light.

On the two frag tanks, I have a 6x24w T5 unit using GE 6500k tubes for the xenia which is housed in the top 3x3ft frag tank, the lower 3x3ft frag tank is lit by another 8x54w Lightwave unit and this gets the old tubes from the main display as the water is only a few inches deep, so I am confident that even old tubes produce enough PAR for frag colour and growth.

I use one Tunze 6080 stream and two Tunze 6025 nano streams for internal water movement in the main display, all are modified so I have no idea what output they produce.

The water is returned from the sump courtesy of a MAK 4 external pump.

The xenia frag tank is fed by a small Eheim hobby pump, the water over-flows from this upper frag tank into the lower SPS frag tank. The lower SPS frag tank has a single modified 6025 nano stream to boost the water movement.

The filtration is nice and simple.

A deep sand bed, cheato and xenia form the biological and organic components.

Mechanical waste removal is taken care of by what I can only describe as the best skimmer I have ever used. A Reef Octopus XP 3000 cone skimmer. The volume of skimmate this produces is shocking, about 20 litres a week.

There is no live rock, just a few bits of dead reef bones and, if you look at the full tank shot dated Aug 2010, on the right of the image you can see a long grey branch. I made this branch myself by heating up a bit of 25mm pipe work, twisting it out of shape then covering it in a couple of packets of milliput and crushing some old coral gravel and dead coral frags onto it. Look at it now; would you have known it was a fake bit of rock? As you can see there is not a lot of rock work, as I like the tank to be filled with corals, not rock. I prefer looking at corals!

The only phosphate remover I have ever used on this tank is The Reef Aquatics Aqua-PHOS FE. My water was tested for phosphates ages ago (Gattsps tested it) and there was no PO4 showing, coupled with the results I have, I am very pleased with this media. I also use a small amount of The Reef Aquatics Aqua-CARB.

There are no other mechanical or biological filters employed.

The tank has no cooling system employed and is heated with three 300w heaters and one 400w heater, all heaters have their own built in thermostat.

As a rule I don't use any additives other than iodine, which I dose once a month if I remember.

No blue bottles, no vials of bacteria, no secrets or magic potions.

I do have some liquid calcium, magnesium and alkalinity additives to hand, should my Mag, Alk or Ca need minor adjustment. The Reef Aquatics products are what I use.

I use a Deltec calcium reactor which keeps up with Ca and Alk demand, this has been very reliable although Keith had this before me and, he has repaired it with milliput (Keith damages everything) but it still works fine!

I can honestly say I would rather boil my head than let an aquarium computer run my tank. Think about Dell or HP PCs which have had millions spent on research and development and they still crash – I know of too many horror stories with aquarium computers and, I don’t feel a computer should control a reef tank. Monitor perhaps, but never control.

With me, it’s more a case of the lack of automation; I have no PH probe, no computers, no peri pumps, no cooling system and just plain RO water with no D.I. resin.

The only automated components are a Tunze auto top up and Tesco digital timers for my lights.

I feed flake food between 3-6 times a day and frozen about once a day.

The only coral that gets specific target feeding is a rhizoo and that will eat near enough anything, flake, pellet, frozen and even roast beef..... Ok the roast beef bit was a joke :-)

The husbandry and maintenance is fairly simple.

I like to change 40 litres of water once a week and clean the glass as needed. I am happy to use any proven brand of salt, at the moment I am using D&D salt but if I had to pick a favourite, it would be Aquamedic Reef Salt, even though it suffers with a slightly low mag this is easily adjusted and I feel it’s great value and mixes very well.

I test my alkalinity at least once a week, calcium and magnesium about once a month. I don’t test for PO4 or NO3.

This tank, like most others has had its fair share of hurdles. Most have been created by me. I think it's important to talk about mistakes, as I have learnt from other people's errors and I hope other people may be able to learn what not to do, as well as what to do from my experiences.

So here we go, I bare all (I feel like I am at the doctors with a 'man' problem):

Like anyone who has been in the hobby for a number of years, I have also had livestock losses. Most recently are a ribbon eel and only a few weeks ago, one of my favourite fishes, an anampses wrasse. The eel just refused to eat, although he was eating fine. The wrasse was my fault and I should have known better (I have other wrasses in the tank). I was in my LFS when I was advised they had a selection of anampses in, even though I feared another wrasse addition could upset the harmony, I thought I'd get a small one and hoped it would fly in under the radar. My plan failed. My halichoeres cosmetus and six line decided to gang up on the new anampses and the established anampses! On the 2nd day, I found both amampses dead, they had both jumped. I kicked myself and I still do to this day - why did I not leave well enough alone. Aside from the above, the only other fish loss I've had was a banana wrasse soon after the tank was started.

The first major problem was during the winter of 2009, I very nearly lost all my SPS, if you can remember the huge amount of snow we had, during this cold snap I had two power cuts, each over 10 hours. The tank temperature went from 27-28c down to around 19c. Lots of stuff did strip and die, but hey ho, that's life. A few bits of SPS did pull through and are still with me. I did however loose several SPS corals.

I have also by accident, let a galvanised cable slip into the water – not sure for how long – this created some toxic issue causing corals to sulk. Several large water changes pulled the tank around.

Most recently I had a magnesium over dose. I was using a test kit that I had stupidly stored in too high a temperature and it was massively under-reading, but before I discovered it was under reading, I was chucking in a fair bit of magnesium. After I bought a new test kit my magnesium read just under 1800ppm.... Whoops! I had to drop my salinity from 35ppt to 33ppt and again perform some larger than normal water changes.

In this tank I have had monti eating nudis and a gall crab in Barry’s trachy. So far I’ve not had any acro-eating flat worms (AEFW) but, after being ‘lucky’ enough to have AEFW twice before in previous systems, I am well aware that they can crop up, despite fastidious quarantine and pest control measures – so I live in fear of the dreaded AEFW.

I have a great interest in AEFW but, it is this pest that strikes a lot of fear into me. Every time I added an acropora I worried lots, even after I had inspected and dipped the coral, as with each introduction of livestock, especially acropora, it creates an opening for AEFW to get into my system. I am very reluctant to add any acropora now. I have selected a large portion of SPS which is not acropora, to mitigate the damage if or when AEFW strike. This was another reason for my aquascape being made into several separate islands, to reduce transfer rates of AEFW - creating mini 'fire breaks'. I've look at people on the forums that are in the spring of their reef-keeping life and the level of coral introduction into their systems is a worry for me.

I have also had a few equipment failures, the pump on my calcium reactor let me down and a wave polario gave up on me. Aside from that, nothing major on the equipment front..... Yet!

Pair of pink skunk clowns	Rainsford goby	Yellow tangs x2
Humbug damsel	Six line wrasse	Halichoeres Cosmetus
Halichoeres melanurus	Dragon face pipe fish	Scopas tang

I have various SPS and LPS corals but I don't have so much interest in obtaining the correct I.D. as I tend to follow this basic rule: The softer and fleshier a coral is, the less flow and light is needed. The harder a coral is, more flow and light is needed. Last rule, avoid most NPS corals.

One camel shrimp	One black cucumber	One red serpant starfish
Several small snails	A Haddoni carpet nem	Two porcelain crabs

I have kept a reef tank for about 8 years.

There's something about fish, corals and aquatics in general that captures my interest, I almost get lost and go into my own world when I see aquatic livestock. This hobby gives me so much pleasure; it is hard for me to find words to describe the effect these animals have on me.

When I am lucky enough to dive on coral reefs, I often cannot contain my excitement and on the first dive I end up yelling underwater saying stuff like "wow!", "oh my god!" and so on. It's one of the only times in life where I cannot control myself, the stunning images that natural coral reefs offer are magnificent!

One thing this reef tank has demonstrated is just how little is needed, it has helped me realise there's a lot of stuff I don't need.

I would like to say thank you to the members of UR who voted for my tank.

I would like to thank Gavin and Nick from Swallow Aquatics, if it was not for you two I would never had got into the hobby, you have both been a great help and you're both very good friends of mine. At least half my SPS and 99% of my LPS and all of my fish came from Swallow Aquatics.

I'd like to thank Barry and Keith as some of my SPS corals came from them as frags. Keith looked after some of my old SPS when I closed down my last 1000 litre SPS system and, I now have them again in this system - thank you Keith.

Jasons Aquatics also deserves a mention as they have supplied me with some awesome SPS corals too. Keep up the good work guys!

Thank you to UltimateReef and the team who keep it running. Despite its critics and faults (nothing is perfect) it still remains at the cutting edge of reefkeeping, knowledge sharing and, networking. It is often the first place I point 'the new guy' to, in order to learn about the hobby. Best of all, it is free.

And last but by no means least I would like to thank my wife who has put up with all sorts of marine madness over the last 8 years, thank you Annika - I love this hobby but you'll be pleased to know I love you more!

Thanks to any one else who I have missed off the list.

Tony