November 2009

Andy’s (Triton) 76 Gallons Reef Aquarium

The Tank:

TOTM, wow! Two years ago I was showing my wife pictures of other TOTM on MARSH, musing that someday we too would have a beautiful slice of the ocean in our living room. That was the “pitch”, of course, and I cleverly disguised the “catch” by hiding the receipts as soon as another box arrived at the door. Oh, honey, it wasn’t really all that much…

I’m not sure what my inspiration for starting a tank was (my wife can tell you, though…she remembers everything….another reason for hiding the receipts, btw), but once we made the decision, I spent the next several months doing research. Acting on a valuable piece of wisdom dispensed by Someone Forgotten, the first piece of equipment I bought was a book. Newbies (and I still consider myself one, in many ways), take note.

Anyway, we looked around for a tank that would fit in the only space available, and we settled on a 76 gallon Oceanic half-circle, with stand. The tank sat in the garage while I collected the required equipment, and I finally filled it with water in March, 2007. My intent was to start slow with a FOWLR, and perhaps add some softies in there as time went by.

Our population of fish has been pretty stable since nearly the beginning (everything survived Ike, with the help of a bicycle hand-pump and an air stone). Currently, we have a True Lemonpeel Angel (“Mimi”… the purple eye-shadow made this a natural choice of name for this fish), Sailfin Tang (“Poon”), Bi-Color Blenny (“Benny”), Flame Hawk fish, two False Perculas and a Starkii Damsel. Rounding out the cast and crew are two Blood Shrimp, a Skunk Cleaner, a Pom Pom crab, and a Banded Serpent Star. All of these critters, with the exception of one of the Clowns, have been with us for nearly the entire lifetime of the tank. I have two or three hermits and a couple of turbos, but I’ve never had much of a CUC. I get most of my livestock from Kevin at All About Fish – the fact that I’ve never had a sick fish or a sick tank are probably a testimony to the quality of his merchandise. Props, there.

Lighting:

I run a 36"Current Sundial 4x39w T5HO fixture. I didn’t have much growth with the original set of bulbs that came with this light, but when I swapped them out at 12 months with the Geisemann Actinic+ and Aquablue +, I really saw a difference. I run the whites from noon until 9 pm, and the blues from 11 am until 10 pm.

Filtration:

I run a stock ASM G1X skimmer with whatever pump it is that came with it. I know a lot of folks like to modify their skimmers, but this one works pretty well, so I leave well enough alone. I have a 30 gallon sump, with a refugium so small it is that in name only. I also run carbon through a Little Fishes reactor, and I noticed that when I put the outflow of the reactor in the refugium to provide a little flow, my nitrate dropped from 5-10 to zero. If you have a small refugium and a nitrate problem, you might consider some way to add a little flow.

Circulation:

I run two Koralia 2s; oriented properly, they seem to provide adequate flow throughout the tank.

Parameters: 

Maintenance: 

My philosophy is to mess with tank as little as possible; part of that stems from my nature as a fundamentally lazy person, when it comes to chores. The other part of that is a function of the realization, over time, that the less I meddled with the tank, the happier it seemed to be. I used to test and change the water weekly. Then it was every two weeks. I’m currently at three weeks to a month. I change about 40% of the water on each evolution. I don’t dose regularly, and as I mentioned, I only run carbon in the tank. I filter my tap water using a Watergeneral 6 stage filter, and I age my saltwater two weeks or so before each water change.

Feeding:

I feed the fish once in the morning, and I use, almost exclusively, Newlife Spectrum pellets. I occasionally give some seaweed or frozen mysis, and I feed the corals twice a week with DT's Phytoplankton and Oyster Feast.

Inhabitants:

Special thanks:

Thanks to Ken (you know who you are) for all of the frags and stuff, thanks to Minh and Brandon for early guidance and advice, and thanks to Kevin for his counsel and quality fish.