Tank of the Month - April 2007
 

This month we are featuring Louis Tsai's (louist) beautiful nanoreef aquarium:

[url=http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-04/totm/index.php][img]http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-04/totm/images/RChomepage.jpg[/img][/url]

More details can be found [url=http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2007-04/totm/index.php]here[/URL] or by clicking on the picture above.

Congratulations, Louis!


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<center><font color="#FFFFFF" size="-1">If you'd like to nominate a tank
for Tank of the Month, click <a href="http://reefcentral.com/forums/newthread.php?s=&action=newthread&forumid=189" target="_blank"><font color="#FFFFFF">here</font></a>
or use the button to the right.</font></center>
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<td bgcolor="#FFFFFF" width="27%">[url=http://reefcentral.com/forums/newthread.php?s=&action=newthread&forumid=189]<img src="http://reefkeeping.com/images/nominate1.gif" border="0" title="Click here to nominate a Tank of the Month">[/URL]
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Congratulations Louis!

Awesome tank!

is this the first nano to win? congratulations!

Very nice tank louis! Congratulations!:)


-Chris-

Ive never seen this tank on nano-reef.com. Does louist visit us over there?

Respect the nano :)

Congratulations Louis! Great looking tank, bigger is not always better.

congrats very nice nano.

Sweet tank Louis!!!

Your nano tank is an inspiration to all of us nano reefers!

Amazing nano, love the way the 20K light looks on your corals. Nice lookin blenny too

Congrats! Great looking nano.

Awesome nano... my 5.5g looks like crap and is always full of algae... even with almost 0 feeding and weekly RO-DI water changes. Heh...

Very nice and congrats on TOTM. Love seeing something different on there!

The best nano I have ever seen-not an easy task.

CHEERS!

Great Tank!
I have a couple of questions though...
1) do you collect your natural sea water directly from the ocean? If so, do you worry about pollutants?
2) did the overflow come with the tank, or did you drill the tank yourself?

Thanks! Great JOB!

That is a spectactular nano. Congratulations!

WOW! Simply WOW.

That's beautiful! Great job on that!

Very, very nice.

Great work!

[QUOTE][i]<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9657290#post9657290 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Inflames [/i]
[B]Ive never seen this tank on nano-reef.com. Does louist visit us over there?

Respect the nano :) [/B][/QUOTE]


Yeah his tank is over there and this isnt the only nano to win. I think a 20 gallon won it also.

GO NANO REEFERS

awsome job louis.

Great looking tank, the photography is top notch!

Truly bad ***.

Really did deserve the TOTM title, truly an awesome tank.

Thanks everyone for your kind words! I am very honored to have my little tank considered for TOTM! I guess this stemmed from the little monthly competition we run in the nano-reef forum here on RC. Skipper gave us his support and here we are! :)

To answer the two questions raised by Razzagas:
1) I buy the NSW from a reputable LFS here in Sydney. They supply a lot of the NSW for the reefers in Sydney. Our coastal water is pretty decent if you pump it at appropriate places at appropriate times. Most of the reefers in Sydney use NSW.
2) No, I drilled the tank and plumbed it myself. This tank used to be filtered by a AquaClear 70 HOB filter that was modified into a HOB refugium. Later, I wished to increase the stability of the tank & remove some of the clutter and I decided to revamp the tank.

The upgrade involved drilled 2x 20mm (3/4") holes for the bulkheads and plumbing that into the big blue tub you see. The blue tub is sold as a trash bin, a little like Rubbermaid you guys get. The plumbing parts are called "irrigation fittings" here in Australia, and everything screw together with BSP threads (NPT in the US). During the upgrade, I suffered the loss of ~4 colonies of Acropora and ~6 beautiful frags of "SPS". This was later attributed to the high pH of freshly mixed IO (even after 24hours) since the extra volume of the refugium was much greater than the display tank. My fault really, should have taken it slow. I was reading Steve Weast's thread about his tank crash, and when he said he mixed the salt and pump it into the tank, i thought "oh no!".... may all his corals RIP.

Another lesson I learned was not to drill with your fish still in the tank! My mandarin was scared 1/2 to death and refused to move or eat for a week :( I later weaned her back onto frozen food and she's now happy as before!

Here's a FTS that wasn't in the article:
[img]http://www.zengalleria.com/images/aquarium/CRW_3238.jpg[/img]

Absolute perfection!

Beautiful tank, Congrats!

Great tank Louis! BRAVO!

Great job. Truly deserving TOTM.