Congratulations to Renae Barry on winning TOTM for January 2009 with her 3 year old, thriving, 18 footer.
Renae is known as coral1 on the RTAW Forums and you can read more about her tank in her Tank Journal.
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Background
First I would like to thank you for voting my own little Barry(er) reef as tank of the month. It all began long long ago, lol, about 25 years go with gold fish, that wasn't enough I needed tropical, we had tropical fish for about 15 years.
In May 2005 we began with a 6 x 2 x 2 marine tank with bio balls and we knew NOTHING, but we didn't know that, we soon had the itch and in October 2005 we started planning our super tank, designs began,we were after a mixed reef with schooling fish and lots of swimming space so an 18ft tank should do the job. (mind you before a few drinks it was a 10ft tank). The 6ft tropical tank had to go.
With such a big project comes mega weight issues of the tank kind, we had to have the floor reinforced to hold the weight of the tank, it was decided that the sump & refugium would be plumbed outside on the decking. Our equipment, stand, etc were purchased from Bunnarong Aquarium and our tank was built by lee at Australian Aquariums. Finally on January 26th 2006 the tank was WET. About 3 weeks later we found this forum and MASOV and realized that we knew NOTHING. the things we would have done differently are an endless list, but with the help and support of the forum and MASOV the tank is now happy thriving and always evolving.
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The Tank
Our tank is L shaped 10ft long turning the corner for another 8ft. In total 18ft of outside viewing.
The tank is 30" wide and 24" high. Our total tank volume is 2,550lt
The total system volume is 4,135lts
This includes a sump of 8ft long x 2ft x 2ft with a volume of 906lt
and our refugium is 6ft long x 2ft x 2th with a volume of 679lt
Filtration and Flow
We have 2 Corner weirs and 3 returns (these have changed plenty of times over the years) they are currently an eheim 1262.
Aprox 250kg of live rock & sandstone, not sure on the quantity of sand but it is approx 5" deep depending on where the tunze put it.
We started with the tunze Skimmer but we had a problem with yellow water so we have changed to the DBreef tech custom built skimmer which has now been running for 2 years (many thanks to Dallas) best piece of equipment on the tank.
We are currently running 4 Tunze 6100 and 2 Tunze 6200 controlled by the Tunze 7095 for water movement.
Lighting
The tank was originally lit by 4 shark units, they were 4ft units with 400w MH and electronic ballast and 4 54w T5 globes, we now are running 4 x 4ft 8 x 54w T5 globes. Quite a change (especially for the power bill.
Half of the lights come on at 7am till 9pm, and the other half, come on at 9am - 8pm we are still playing around with this.
The auto top off is connected to two 2000lt rain water tanks under the house. after 3 years of using seachem calcium and alk supplements, we are now just dripping lime water.
Water collecting is done at Mornington, we have a purpose built trailer, with 800lt tank, generator and a dirty water pump, water changing is 800lt fortnightly. we also keep a 500lt holding tank for emergencies
Water Parameters:
Temp: 24.4
PH: 8.4
Salinity: 1.024
Nitrate: 0
Phos: 0
Alk: 9.9
Calc: 460
Mag: 1050
Fish stock:
1 x Naso Lituratus - Lipstic Tang (King of the Tank)
5 x Paracanthurus Hepatus - Regal Blue Tang ( 1 in Refugium) (Coral Nipper) :z
5 x Zebrasoma Flavescens - Yellow Tangs ( 1 in Refugium)
1 x Boadianus Mesothroax - Bicoloured Hogfish
1 x Synchiropus splendidus - Green Manderine fish
12 x Amphiprion Ocellaris - Clown Fish (Nemo)
1 x Amblygobius rainsford - rainsfordi goby
1 x Pomamcentrus Pavo - Blue chromis (Nasty)
3 x Assessor Flavissimus - Yellow Assesors
2 x Assessor Macneilli - Blue Assesors
1 x Cirrhilabarus Solorensis - Fairy Wrasse
1 x Halichoeres Chrysus - Banana Wrasse
2 x Pseudanthias Cooperi - Orange anthius
1 x Centro pyge Bispinosa - Coral Beauty
1 x Labroides Dimidiatus - Cleaner Wrasse
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Inverts:
1 x Mantis Shrimp
2 x Abalone - hallotis asinina
1 x Blue Linkia Starfish
6 x Turbo Snails
6 x Trombus Snails
10+ x corinthian
Unknown Crabs
4 x Urchins - spiny (hickhikers from origional tank)
1 x collector (hichhikers from origional Tank)
1 x Magnifica
Corals : Stony
Cataphylia Jardieni
Caulastrea Sp
Favia sp Green
Euphillia ancora - green hammer
Euphillia Divisa - Frog spawn pink
Blastomvssa Merleti
Favites sp
Helio fungia
Fungia sp
Duncanopsammia axifunga
Corals : Soft
Xenia
Sarcophyton - few shapes and colours
Lobophturn
Sinularia - Green & pink
Capnella - (I think)
(Due to the Coral eating nature of the Blue tangs many of our corals had to be re housed in the smaller tank, leaving the tank with less variety.) that's a whole other journal)
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Other :
Zoonathids
Fluffy morphs
Anemones x 4
Acknowledgements
Last but certainly not least I would like to thank Chris (My Husband) and partner in crime) without whom I wouldn't have a tank at all. Not only does he do all the plumbing and the aqua scaping (I cant reach the bottom...no really I can't.) also drives the truck for the water changes (I don't have a truck license) and for not locking his wallet for the past 3 years ( mine was lost....)
I would also like to thank all those on the forum and MASOV who have given me endless buckets of help and advice, (without you all I would have expelled my zooathelia and retracted my polyps long ago.)
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