|
Page 1 of 3 Thank you for nominating our 120-gallon reef! It turned 5 years old this past December, and has come a long way through a myriad of successes and problems. All in all, it's been a grand ride having it in our living room to enjoy every day! It's the first place company and clients gravitate toward when they enter our home and neighborhood kids have taken samples from time to time to their classrooms for inspection under a microscope. The tiny little misshapen starfish have been a real attraction for the kids and a classroom favorite. And now, after the release of Finding Nemo, our Pacific Regal Tang and pair of Percula Clowns are a guaranteed attraction. We've had them for about 4-1/2 years, so they've grown quite a bit and been around much longer than the movie has.
| 
| | Ridge Coral (Hynophora ridgida) | When did this all begin? Our eldest son, Troy, is the reason we have reef tanks. Saltwater aquaria and teeny, tiny organisms were his passion from a very early age. He had his first 10-gallon saltwater tank when he was only three years old, and he learned so much about it from a marine scientist friend as well as television programs such as NOVA and George Page's Nature before ever allowing me to get him his first fish, a Tomato Clown. A week later, we added a sea anemone, then later on a small horseshoe crab and sea urchin. We lived in Baton Rouge then, so he had hermit crabs, small conchs, and a small starfish from the Gulf of Mexico. With weekly water changes, his tank thrived. We had to tear it down and give away the inhabitants when we moved18 months later. I don't recall adding chemicals to that tank, other than chlorine remover, and of course I didn't know what RO water was. We set it up with an undergravel filter, no powerheads, IO salt, and normal fluorescent lighting. Amazing that it was so successful. Years later, in 1998, Troy turned an empty 30-gallon tank into a thriving reef with all the right reef equipment. We were soon hooked and began our search for a large used tank. We found our 120-gallon reef system 5 months later, empty, with excellent lighting, a decent protein skimmer, 2-stage Kent Marine RO unit, a stand, and a 20-gallon aquarium sump. | 
| | Sailfin Tang | During the first year, we were overprotective parents of this reef in the worst way. I did water tests once or twice a week, added this and that, tried all sorts of things and followed a variety of conflicting advice, and the tank progressed in spite of our interference. The tank put up with a lot of excess hands-in-the-water syndrome � Reef Hand, I believe that's called? Some corals thrived and some did not. Many are still there today, and have grown impressively. We have had intermittent success and failure with the stony corals and clams, regardless our husbandry practices. Some of the SPS corals continue to thrive while others don't. The same has been true with our LPS corals�some are 5 years old and some have survived only a few weeks. We have a stunning meat coral that was originally in Troy's 30-gallon reef, so it has been with us for 5-1/2 years. In summary of our current practices, we have no golden advice to offer, except loads of patience, ask for advice from a variety of sources, and read recommended books. What have we learned that has produced the most dramatic improvement? Food for the fish and corals is no longer fed in massive quantities every day�the nitrates have dropped from an all-time high of about 70 ppm to hardly detectable. The first few years the tank was fed a smorgasbord of food nearly every day, and for the past year it's been fed very sparingly. Consequently, our corals are much happier.
|
