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Congratulations to Justin Wong on winning TOTM for June 2008 with his stunning reef!
Justin is known as Jordan on the RTAW Forums and you can find out more about his tank in his Tank Journal.
Introduction
My interests in aquarium keeping started from a young age due to my parents always having goldfish or tropical fish whilst I was growing up. I guess it was only natural for me to take it up as a hobby when I got older. There’s something tranquil and peaceful looking into the tank that I hope one day my own children will enjoy.
Current tank
The tank is a 4ft (122cm) x 14” (36cm) x 20” (51cm) that is approximately 230 litres. It has a centre brace with a weir built in the left hand corner. It has 6mm glass all round. I chose this size of tank because I wanted to have something that had enough water volume to help maintain stable parameters. Due to living in an apartment a 4 ft tank is probably the largest that I could have. In hindsight, I would really like to have a tank that was at least 2 ft deep.
The tank has been set up since 26th January 2005. Being a complete newbie to marine I started with the attitude of starting with the easy stuff such as mushrooms and other low light corals and ‘never’ wanting to keep SPS (how quickly and expensively things change!).
The stand is pretty much standard with the hood being modified to add height to install halide lights to replace the old power compact light unit.
Filtration
Filtration of the tank is mainly through live rock I estimate about 45-50kg of rock in total and a deep sand bed in the main display. A separate refugium tank is also set up with another deep sand bed as well as for growing macro algae for nutrient export.
A sump, converted from a mini-reef setup, houses an Aqua C EV180 skimmer powered with an Ocean Runner 3500. A return pump of 2500lph returns sump water back into the main display. Another 1000lph pump feeds the refugium.
Circulation
Water circulation in the display tank consists of a Tunze 6060 (6000 lph), A Nano stream 6025 (2500lph) and a modified Maxijet 1200 (around 5000 lph) which is about 58 times turnover.
Lighting
Lighting consists of 2 x 150w shopfitters with 20K BLV lamps. There are also 2 x 54W HO T5 with actinics which are no longer used as I find that the 20K lamps are blue enough. The lights come on at 3pm and stay on until 1am. 2 Lunatracker moonlights are always on as is the refugium PC light.
Other Equipment
Auto topup is maintained by a Tunze Osmolater that is connected to a Tunze Calcium dispenser unit that provides kalk addition. A Reef Octopus CR70 calcium reactor is also used to help maintain calcium and carbonate hardness levels. 2 desk fans in the hood are used in the summer to keep temperatures stable.
Water parameters
Salinity – 1.026 (refractometer)
Calcium – 380-400 (Salifert)
ALK – 9dKH (Salifert)
Nitrate – undetectable (Salifert)
Phosphate – undetectable (Salifert)
Magnesium – 1400 (Salifert)
pH – 8.1
– 25oC – 27oC No chiller installed but temps are pretty stable even in summer (lights off on really hot days and fans turned on).
Additives
Seachem Advantage Calcium – used when calcium is out
Seachem Reef Builder – when alkalinity is out (the one thing that seems to always be depleting in the tank)
Epsom salt – used when mg levels are low
Zeovit Coral Snow – about 3 times a week mixed with Coral Vitalizer
Zeovit Coral Vitalizer – 3 drops per day
Kalkwasser in top up water (RO)
Fish stock
Paracanthurus hepatus - Blue tang
Zebrasoma scopas - Brown
2 Tank bred Amphiprion ocellaris (mated pair) – Clown fish
2 Chromis analis -Yellow Chromis
3 Chromis viridis – Blue/Green Chromis
Pseudochromis paccagnellae - Royal Dottyback
Gobiodon histrio – Green Coral Goby
Coral stock
Acropora sp
Montipora sp
Pocillopora damicornis
Seriatopora hystrix
Acanthastrea sp
Sarcophyton – fluro green leather coral
Fungia sp – green, green tentacled, orange
Zoanthids
Duncanopsammia axifuga
Stylophora pistillata
Trachyphyllia
Sinularia sp - green
Corallimorphs – purples, green striped, red, pink speckled
Ricordia – purple / green
Rhodactis
Pachyclavularia – green star polyps
Other Inverts
Stenopus hispidus – Coral Banded Shrimp
Tridacna crocea – Blue clam
Trochus snails
Turbo snails
Hermit crabs
Commensal crabs
Maintenance
Glass is cleaned 2-3 times a week (quite difficult due to coral growth limiting movement of cleaning magnet)
Skimmer is cleaned at least 2 times per week
40 litre water change per week
Water parameters tested once a week
Manual removal of Bryopsis (Green hair algae) when things look a bit feral.
Feeding – fish fed once a day with Life Spectrum flakes / pellets / DIY food mix / frozen mysis shrimp / brine shrimp / nori.
Macro algae pruned about once a fortnight
Acknowledgments
Thanks to my wife for being an understanding person and putting up with this hobby of mine even after many floods, countless hours spent maintaining (going to the LFS) and of course turning a blind eye to the $$$ spent.
Thanks to all the great people on RTAW forums where I’ve learnt so much from and for the ones that put so much effort into providing us with such a great resource for the hobby.
Lastly, thank you to RTAW for selecting my tank as TOTM it is an honour to have even been considered to have a tank worthy enough.
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