Steven Pro’s 55 Gallon Reef Aquarium

Tank:

55 gallon Perfecto tank with two 1” bulkhead drains

            20 gallon Extra High Perfecto tank with glass divider acting as
            the sump

Lighting:

                4 Normal Output 40 watt lamps

                2 URI Actinic 03 lamps on for 14 hours per day

                1 URI Actinic White (50/50) lamp on for 13 hours per day

                1 URI Aquasun (full-spectrum) lamp on for 13 hours per day

                There is no glass cover over the tank.

    The lights are mounted approximately 2” off of the water.

By any definition, this is pretty low intensity lighting, but I have been successful with this setup for years.  It helps that I prefer corals that are found naturally occurring in low light areas.  I stock almost exclusively large polyp stony corals, as I am fondest of them.  There are a few exceptions to this, as you will see below.  I also have several soft corals, many mushrooms, some polyps, and a few SPS corals.  None of these, though, is what you would consider a high light animal.  They all fall under the category of low to moderate lighting, even the few SPS corals.

Water Movement:

                Supreme Mag-Drive 500 submersed as return pump from sump

                Two Hagen 802 Powerheads in tank arranged in opposite
                corners

                Powerheads are on an alternating cycle care of an Aquarium
                Systems Natural Wave multi-strip

                While not necessary, I like the wavemaker and in particular the way I have it setup.  It forces my Elegance and Finger Leather to sway back and forth every three minutes.  The rhythmic ebb and flow is almost hypnotic.  The major drawback is that they take up that much more space, especially the Finger Leather.  Each time the water direction changes, it leans at a 45-degree angle in each direction, which precludes me from placing anything too close to it.

Other Hardware:

                Tunze 3115 Venturi Protein Skimmer

                Aquarium Systems 200 watt Visitherm Heater set at 80*F

Rockwork & Sand:

                Approximately 60 pounds liverock, mix of pre-ban Atlantic base
                rock and Fiji liverock

                CaribSea Special Reef Grade sand at a depth of 4”

Photosynthetic Invertebrates:

                Lately, I have been removing more and more of the mushrooms.  There are becoming quite prolific and more like weeds everyday.  I am focusing on the LPS and the few SPS and soft corals that I have.  I am planning a new tank, 120 gallons, which I will mention more about later, but in that tank I will probably just have the LPS, SPS, and two soft corals.  I wish to keep the Sinularia and Yellow Sarcophyton.  I believe only keeping these will have several advantages.  One, there will be a lot more room for the other corals to grow, several of my LPS are getting rather large and with their sweepers, they could become a problem for other corals.  And two, I believe this will cut down significantly on the stinging and chemical warfare (alleopathy) that is going on between the corals.

Fish:

Maroon Clownfish-Premnas biaculeatus

Orange Tail Fiji Damsel-Chrysiptera cyanea

Algae Blenny-Salarias fasciatus

Yellow Tang-Zebrasoma flavescens

Other Invertebrates:

Unidentified Pair of Pistol Shrimp

Turbo sp. Snails

Astraea sp. Snails

Red Legged Hermit Crabs-Paguristes cadenati

Blue Starfish-Linkia laevigata

Water Specifics:

Aquatechnic Two-Stage Separate Resin De-Ionizer with a DIY
            Carbon Prefilter

Aquarium Systems Reef Crystals Salt Mix used to target 1.024-
            1.026

Seachem Reef Builder and Marine Buffer used to reconstitute the
            DI water

I am pretty militant about using nothing but purified water for my reef tank.  I would place a RO or DI unit up there with a protein skimmer for one of the most useful and essential pieces of equipment for marine aquariums.

Maintenance:

Peter Wilken’s Kalkwasser dripped nightly using a Kent Marine
            Aqua-Doser

Lugol’s Iodine made fresh every three months from a Pharmacy
            grade 5% solution

I perform a 30-gallon water change every month.  I completely drain my sump and take about ten gallons out of the tank.  My 55-gallon tank probably only holds about forty-five actual gallons of water once you figure the amount of water displaced by rock and sand.  Taking into account the tank’s actual capacity and the sump, I perform 50% monthly water changes. 

I am neurotic about water changes.  They are by far the best way to minimize pollutants and replenish trace elements.  No combination of additives and nutrient export processes can come close to matching all the beneficial elements of a water change.  There is a lot of ongoing discussion in magazine articles and on-line message boards concerning the potential buildup over time of certain metals and other harmful compounds to potentially lethal levels.  Without boring you with all the details, debate, and chemical analysis, I would like to say a few things.  One, I have yet to see an independent study of artificial sea salt mixes in which any brand matched natural seawater perfectly.  They all have been shown to have excesses and deficiencies of certain elements.  Some of these are by design while others are just contaminants due to production and cost concerns.  My first basic point is that our aquariums are not perfect replicas of the ocean when first filled.  Two, even though our salt mixes are not perfect, they are the best we have and keeping our water as close to that initial fill concentration is what we should all strive for.  And lastly, all of the hard and soft corals, mushrooms, polyps, and macroalgaes that we keep engage in a form of chemical warfare.  They excrete toxic substances in an effort to kill their neighbors and therefore obtain more room to grow.  All of these toxins are floating around in our aquariums and have the potential to kill our inhabitants.  In my opinion, properly conducted, large, frequent water changes are the best thing we can do to minimize pollutants in our tanks.

I know some people will be scared to perform a 50% water change and you should be a little nervous.  I can tell you that a large, properly conducted water change is harmless.  On the other hand, if you do a large water change with newly mixed saltwater or water that has a significantly different salinity or temperature or a myriad of other things, you can create a disaster.  Below is the protocol I use for water changes on my home aquarium.

I run my Kati-Ani unit into a 50-gallon food grade barrel.  I drop a Mag-Drive 500 and Visitherm heater into it for circulation, to warm the water, to maximize dissolved oxygen, and to drive off carbon dioxide.  After twenty-four hours, I add the salt mix.  The next day, I test pH and alkalinity and adjust with Seachem Reef Builder and Marine Buffer.  Finally, on the fourth day I perform my water change.  The new water has been well-aerated and matched for temperature and salinity.  I use a Python water changer to drain the tank water into a floor drain and the Mag-Drive to pump the water into the tank.  The whole process takes a few days, but not much of my time.  I probably spend less than one hour doing everything over four days.

Every six months, I remove all of the pumps and the skimmer.  I place all of these in a five-gallon bucket of hot tap water and vinegar.  This removes calcium deposits and, I believe, increases the life expectancy of the pumps.  The two Hagen 802 powerheads that I am running now are original to the tank.  They have lasted over eight years of constant use with the last two years run off of the wavemaker cycling every three minutes.  They sometimes chatter for one second when first turned on, but have never failed to operate.  I have had the Tunze for seven years, but that is not surprising.  They have a reputation for superior workmanship and a long life.

Lastly, I wanted to give you one more tip from a maintenance guy.  I use a magnet cleaner on my tank every few days.  This keeps the buildup to a minimum by removing algae before it has a chance to take hold.  It only takes a minute, but it saves a lot of hard scraping of coralline algae later.

Foods/Feeding:

                I feed the tank almost daily.  I use a variety of foods.  Generally, I feed one cube of the frozen foods or 1/8 teaspoon of the other foods.  I also soak my food in Boyd’s Vita-Chem and American Marine Selcon.

                Frozen Mysis Shrimp

                Frozen Pacifica Plankton

                Frozen Bloodworms

                SweetWater Zooplankton (daphnia)

                Cyclop-Eeze

                Saltwater Vibragro Small Pellets

                HBH Marine Soft & Moist Spirulina Pellets

                Tetra Color Bits

                Hikari Marine-S Pellets

                I set this tank up about eight years ago and moved it once, a little over four years ago.  It started out as a fish-only with liverock tank for the first three years.  Then I introduced a few corals, the Cup, the Elegance and the Red Ricordea, and I am proud to say I still have these original additions.  I have been pretty happy with it, all in all.  One thing I would change is the sand.  I have seeded it with copepods, amphipods, bristle worms, spaghetti worms, and miniature serpent starfish numerous times.  None of them seem to like this sand, leaving my DSB devoid of life and prone to trapping detritus.  I am putting together a new 120-gallon (2’x2’x4’) reef tank for myself and I have already purchased 850 pounds of the infamous Home Depot Southdown sand for it.  I have used this sand in many of my customer’s tanks and found it to support a wide variety of life forms.

                Another change for the new tank will be to exclude any powerheads.  Instead, I will be using two Mag-Drive 1200 pumps mounted externally.  I have been very happy with the performance and reliability of the powerheads, wavemaker, and Mag-Drive pump.  The change is merely a matter of simplicity and maintenance.

                I will also opt for the addition of a refugium and calcium reactor for the new system.  I want the added benefits the refugium can provide in the form of increased water volume, nutrient export, and plankton production.  The calcium reactor will be used in addition to nightly kalkwasser dosing.  I have been very pleased with the growth I have using kalkwasser.  I just want to be able to supplement my current method of maintaining calcium and alkalinity because I plan to add some more SPS corals into my mix.

                I will keep you all informed as to how things progress and will probably write another piece on my new tank in the future.