WAMAS Tank of the Month
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My name is Eric and I have been in the hobby for almost 20 years. I was introduced to the hobby from a LFS that is no longer in operation, Marine Scene out of Herndon.
I joined the WAMAS community for over 12 years ago when I had a 65 gallon tank with a HOB skimmer and power compact lighting. Since that time I have had multiple different tanks and my current tank has been running for 8 years and has gone through several different iterations. My current tank’s dimensions are 72x30x22” which was built by Miracles in Glass out of Canada. The total volume of the tank is 205 gallons and is made of 3/4” starphire glass with a custom overflow on the back wall. My stand was custom built by a friend based off of my wife’s “furniture grade” requirement. I have a very large sump and a 34 gallon frag tank tied into the main tank which brings the total volume of the system to approx. 300 gallons. I am currently running 4 MP40’s in reef crest mode running close to 80-90% for flow inside the display. My return pump is currently an Eheim 1262 that has been in service since 2012. I have been looking at a new return pump as I want to try out a DC pump. Still not sure what I’m going to go with but I am very limited in space for the return area in the sump and have to find a pump that is less then 4” wide. I was a die hard T5 guy and ran this tank for 5 years with an 8x80 Watt T5 fixture. About 3 years ago, I was able to make the transition to Gen 3 Pro Radions and really liked how they didn’t heat up the tank and produced a slight shimmer in the tank. Currently I am running a Giesemann Stellar Hybrid fixture with (3) XR30 Gen 4 Pro Radions and 4 Blue + T5 bulbs. Which I believe is the best of both worlds. The Radions are running for 10 hours per day and the T5s are running for 5. I like to keep it simple. I run a large skimmer (ATB 1050a) and do 30 gallon water changes at least 2x per month. I try to clean my sump out every few months and will run filters socks every once in a while. About a year ago, I made the transition from 2 part dosing to a calcium reactor. It was a big investment but has proven to be worth the cost. I did a ton of research into calcium reactors and decided to go with the Dastaco unit from Unique Corals. This unit is super simple to run and doesn’t require any PH probes to calibrate. I highly recommend this for anyone looking. My main tank is 90% SPS corals in which I have almost 100 different types. In my sump, I have a zoa grow out area and have recently joined the torch craze. I currently only have two high end torches but I’m on the hunt for more. I also love LPS corals and have a huge OG emerald mummy eye chalice as well as some rainbow lobos. I also have way too many fish! I mainly feed frozen mysis and LRS due to the Marine Beta and Copperband only eating frozen food. I also have an auto feeder with mysis sinking pellets feed the tank 2x per day. My Tangs get several strips of seaweed 2x-3x per week. Several years ago, a red algae started growing in my tank that resembled cotton candy. The tangs wouldn’t eat it and it got to the point where I seriously considered breaking the tank down. I threw out a lot of my base rock and removed my sand bed thinking that my son had dropped something in my tank that was causing it. After not finding anything, I tried and ICP test and that still couldn’t provide me a definitive cause. Thanks to John at BRK who recommended fluconazole, I was finally able to beat it. However in the process I lost several thousand dollars in SPS corals. With a lot of my rock being tossed in the trash, it gave me the ability to redo my rock work. I reached out to several companies who made me custom structures for all of my new SPS frags. Over the last year my tank has really come into its own. All my SPS are doing amazing and the new growth is phenomenal. I plan on changing out the return pump to something more powerful and efficient. I also plan on creating another grow out area in my sump since I am running out of room for frags. I also plan on building a torch garden on the bottom of my tank and I will be having to frag some very large SPS colonies to fund that. So watch the forums for some sweet frags. |
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