Matt Seibert's (Wildfire) Reef Aquarium

I started my first saltwater tank 6 years ago. It was a 55G All-Glass which taught me a LOT of important lessons (albeit, most of them the hard way). First, the small water volume made my temps swing wildly in a poorly insulated house. Second, the narrow dimension of the tank made it very difficult to aqauscape. Thirdly, I learned that the freshwater "1 inch of fish to 1 gallon of water" is suicidal in the saltwater world. To this end, my second tank was a 135, and my current one (above) has a 265 Main Tank Capacity. I have tried plenums, DSBs, refugiums, and the like to control nutrients / algae / checmical balances. The one I prefer the most is the least technological approach. I have titrated my feeding to be almost exactly what the tank can consume, leaving not a lot of detritus. In order to take care of whatever is left over, I employ several dozen crabs, snails, and shrimp to help me keep it clean.

My main focus has always been on the "non-sessile" marine creatures (fish, snails, stars, etc) and as such I planned the tank to have a large "main" water volume. The aquascaping is done in such a way as to afford the maximal "cave" structures, while still accomodating a large open water volume for tangs and such to swim and play. For example, the entire "left" mound is hollow inside in three separate compartments, giving my larger fish somewhere to house overnight.

The below shots give you a "wraparound" view of the tank, starting from the left end looking in

Fish:	Anemones:	Inverts:
Sailfin Tang Purple Tang Blue Tang Flame Angel Blue Devil Damsel 7 Blue/Green Chromis Yellow WatchMan Goby True Percula Clown Orange Bellied Clown Pink Skunk Clown	14 Green Buble Tipped Sebae 3 Pink Tipped Sebae	3 Orange Linkia Stars Blue Linkia Star Sand Sifting Star 3 Red Brittle Stars 35 Nassarius Snails 24 Astrea Snails 24 Turbo Snails 5 Peppermint Shrimp Cleaner Shrimp Tiger Cucumber 3 Queen Conch
Corals:
Green Star Polyps "Waving Hand" Polyps (Anthelia) Yellow Polyps "Wild" Polyps Green Torch Blue Maze Brain Kenya Tree (Green) 2 Varieties of Frogspawn Green and Pink Branching Hammer Assorted different zoas Open Brain Toadstool	Tri-Color and Yuma Ricordias Orange Millipora Purple-Tipped Acropora Birdsnest Acro Cabbage Coral Orange/Green CandyCane Fragmentary Moon Coral Brown and Copper Button Polyps

I feed every other day one sheet of roasted Nori via feeding clip. I feed every third day two cubes of "mix" which consists of:

3 Kinds of Seeweed
Mysis and Brine Shrimp
Cyclopeeze
Fresh Frozen Krill, Calamari, and Full Fish

I have a 55g all-glass sump under the tank in which sits my Berlin Skimmer and an additional 85 pounds of live rock. This tank is, in fact, my first tank, reborn with a new role in my system. My main return pump is a Dolphin AmpMaster 3000 using a 1.50" PVC "snorkel" to draw the water from the sump. The outflow of the return pump drives an "under stand spray bar" which distributes water to my chiller, my skimmer, and feeds the tank returns. There is also enough "overpressure" left that I also have a 1.00" line running back into the sump to allow the pump to run wide-open.

I also have a closed loop driven by a second Dolphin AM3000 which is feed by 2 1.50" lines from the tank, and returns using 2 1/00" blukhead lines. The flow is then channeled under the sand / around the tank in 1.00" and 0.75" PVC lines feeding about 210 "holes" or varying diameter.

• 3 400W 10K MH powered by PFO Ballasts
• 4 110W VHO (3 50/50, 1 Actinic) Powered by IceCap 430 and 660 Ballasts
• 6 Dedicated fans in the canopy:
  
  • 4 IceCap 120mm Variable Speed fans
  • 2 7 Inch "Clip On Fans" from target
• 8 "Moon Lights" (blue LEDS)

Current and Historical Tank Conditions

Daily	Weekly	Monthly
Automatic Top-off System for Evaporation Makeup Sweep Glass with Mag Float	Scrape Glass with Kent Scraper Check Ca+, Alk, Salinity Dose Ca+, Alk as needed	Water Change (78 Gallons)

All Lighting, pump, and fan timing is done via X10 PLC devices, driven from the cron daemon on my Linux Box. The controlling is done via a PERL script, which allows me to have a LOT of control over the process, including a CGI-web interface.

We would like to thank Maroon Lagoon for sponsoring the October 2005 TOTM.  Matt will receive a Phosban Reactor from Maroon Lagoon.