My 210 Gal Mixed Reef

[supervdl]

I just want to share some images of my two year old mixed reef with a lot of SPS and some beautiful tangs and other fishes. Enjoy! And please do not hesitate to give feedback or ask any question.


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[OmarD]

Very very nice!

Good job.

[gary faulkner]

Very nice for only two years.
Tell us more about your tank and equipment.

[Dubbin1]

Super nice!!!

[T Man]

Fantastic variety supervdl, mixed reefs rock! Worthy of TOTMIMO. TinMan

[Pmolan]

Looks nice... How many pounds of live rock would you say is in there?

[Ritten]

Just sweeet, I haven't seen a tank like that in a long time. Tell us more.

[InvaderJim]

Nice tank. That's a bunch of rock!

[supervdl]

Ok, here is some information on my tank:

I have some shallow sand and as you can see lots of rocks (I guess about 350 pounds). This is my first tank and I would use next time a little less rock and make a more open aquascape. I don't change anything now because of all the corals growing on the rocks and I had to damage corals during re-arrangements (which I usually do ).

I started out two years ago with a lot of softies and some beginner LPS. I changed along the way to more SPS once I upgraded the system. Now I have a nice mix of corals all around. Most of the SPS is grown from small frags that I got from fellow reefers on reefcentral. Two I bought grown out and two others are frags from liveacquaria.

I run 1 phosban reactor with carbon and 2 phosban reactors with RowaPhos; I run a Biodenitrator from Korallin to keep Nitrates under control; Every other week I change about 40 gal of water. I use a pump from the garage and it takes me not more than 20-30 minutes all-in.

I also like fishes and have a nice group together with a lot of tangs and other grazers that keep the algae out of the tank. I feed corals and fish a lot.

Let me know if you like to know anything else.

Here is another pic from the right side down the tank:

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[supervdl]

Here is the equipment information:

210g Oceanic Glass Tank 72" x 24" x 30"

Light is 3X 400 W Metal Halides 10k - switched to XM recently and about 6 months ago from 250 W to 400 W system, 2 X Actinic VHOs,

Skimmer Predator - works for me and I have rarely read about this skimmer. My LFS guy recommended it with the inital set-up

Auto-top-off system for kalkwasser

2-Part System with reeffiller dosing pump, I have to dose a lot, but there is no room in the stand for a calcium reactor, I use ESV, but will soon change to Randy's recipe to save some $$$

2X Tunzes 6200 pulsing, 4X Powerheads Aquaclear 70 are for water movement; Powerheads are on a Redsea Wavemaker; I thought about a closed loop at some point, but with the corals high up and the glass cover over the Oceanic, it would not really work very well,

Sump is a wet-dry w/o bio balls - I took out the bio balls about three months ago when I had high nitrates. The wet dry is from the initial set-up. If I had to do it again I would get myself a nice sump;

Iwaki 40 for water return,

Refugium with macro hanging on the back,

I have a 3 -stage RO/DI system to prepare water;

Chiller keep temp between 78 and 80

[supervdl]

Here is my livestock list for fishes:

1 pair Ocellaris Clownfishes
1 Naso Tang
1 Powder Blue Tang
1 Red Sea Sailfin Tang
1 Yellow Tang
1 Blue "Hippo" Tang
1 Magnificant Foxface
1 Bicolor Blenny
1 Green Mandarin
7 Blue Green Chromis
3 Spotted Cardinal Fish
1 South Sea Devil Damsel
1 Female Square Spot Anthias

My centerpiece Naso Tang:

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My Powder Blue Tang, another favorite of mine:

[supervdl]

Here are some more photos.

My Blue "Hippo" Tang

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My Red Sea Sailfin

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Let me know if you have any comment or question on my tank.

[drummereef]

Freakin awesome, supervdl! Love the Sailfin, my favorite fish. How does the urchin fare? Does it knock over any of your corals?

[supervdl]

I also have a lot of inverts in my tank.

Here is my Diadema Urchin. It is a little bit of a troublemaker, since it likes to "downsize" some SPS frags once in a while....

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[supervdl]

Yes, and he likes to knock over corals and I had glue everything into place. At some point I got mad at him, but he is tough to catch and with the frags getting larger, he seems to be less of a problem - let's hope it stays that way.

Here is another pick, a little closer.

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Drummereef, the Sailfin is definitly one of my favorites in terms of activity and personality. Great fish. It is about 7 inches long and (I think) has still quite a bit to grow. He grows slowly though. I got him from somebody giving up the tank through my LFS.

[supervdl]

Can I ask for feedback on the size of the pictures please? The pic of the urchins are smaller size than the others. Which are better to see on your screen?

[gabe3d]

Nice tank and fish collection.

On my laptop i have 1024x768 resolution and the urchin pic fits much better than the other pics.

[rarelyseen]

wow looks great

[costeroma]

I really like all of your tangs,my future plans would be to have a bunch of tangs like yours,how do they get along together? did you buy all of your tangs at once? which is the most aggressive and which is the biggest? Thanks for the great pics.

[supervdl]

They are getting along very well. I tried to get tangs of different genus, size and shape to limit the aggressions. Also tried to avoid the real troublemakers like Sohal or Clown tang. I did not buy them at once, but have to say the most aggressive is the Powder Blue and I added him last. The only loss I had was an Achilles and I think it was just the fish (it's more difficult to keep anyway). The Naso is by far the largest, but the others eventually will grow to similar size (like the Sailfin).

[carolina reefer]

Who makes the Predator Skimmer? Do you have a link to one?

[supervdl]

Something Fishy, reefcentral sponsor, has it on their website:

http://www.toofishy.com/product.php?...cat=599&page=1

[costeroma]

Originally posted by carolina reefer
Who makes the Predator Skimmer? Do you have a link to one?

Thanks man I'm setting up a 180 gal. and i love tangs i will get some but i don't know if i have to get them bigger than the ones i all ready have.

[costeroma]

Originally posted by supervdl
They are getting along very well. I tried to get tangs of different genus, size and shape to limit the aggressions. Also tried to avoid the real troublemakers like Sohal or Clown tang. I did not buy them at once, but have to say the most aggressive is the Powder Blue and I added him last. The only loss I had was an Achilles and I think it was just the fish (it's more difficult to keep anyway). The Naso is by far the largest, but the others eventually will grow to similar size (like the Sailfin).

sorry i was trying to quote you.

[gary faulkner]

Smaller pics are better.
You have glass tops on your tank?
Thanks for the thread, I'm all in.