65gal Reef Tank

[kay-bee19]

Here's my 65gal reef tank:

Established in 2006

Filtration: (sump-less set up)
Live rock
Live sand (deep sand bed)
HOB Octopus 800S protein skimmer
2x Reactors (containing granular ferric oxide and carbon)
Rena XP2 Canister filter (mechanic filtration and chemi-pure)

Fish:
2x Azure Damsels
1x Royal Gramma

Clean up Crew:
About a half-dozen blue hermit crabs
1x white-shelled nassarius snail
1x black-shelled nassarius snail
1x maroon serpent sea star

Lighting: 5x 39watt T5HO

Various LPS, SPS, and soft corals, including:

Acans:

Pink Lobophyllia:

Encrusting Hynophora

Pectinia

War Coral/Favia:

Tubipora:

 

[roydooms]

Looks Great

 

[Sarcothelia]

Wow. That war Favia looks awesome. Not much room for anything else in there, lol. Shows what patience can achieve

 

[kay-bee19]

Yeah, definately running out of 'real estate'. I had to relocate close to 80 heads of trumpet coral and some other fast growing corals (xenia, anthelia & zoanthids) to another tank.

Many of my corals started out as small frags. As an example, fully expanded my frogspawn colony is nearly 8" in diameter (and heavy!). It began as a tiny single-headed barely grape-sized frag back in 2007:

My emerald crab made a rare appearance last night. Forgot to include it in my CUC list.

 

[Ricksreef]

Terrific looking tank,why only two fish?

 

[carey]

That is an AWESOME tank! Wow! Excellent job.

 

[kay-bee19]

Thanks!

Terrific looking tank,why only two fish?

There are actually three fish (the two azure damsels and the royal gramma). I kind of like the idea of a sparsely-populated reef tank.

 

[Lowsdime]

Wow this I've been looking at pics of people's tanks all night an have seen some nice ones... But this tank is over the top awesome! Very nice and tasteful

 

[rdnelson99]

Amazing! Nuf said.

 

[mistaflicksta]

That is a good collection of acans you have there. did you get them localy or did you order online?

 

[conkyy]

Thats top of the line right there, Hope to be adding corals to mine this weekend.

 

[scubasteve03]

Wow very nice like the acans my fave

 

[kay-bee19]

Thanks for the compliments everyone!

That is a good collection of acans you have there. did you get them localy or did you order online?

I got them locally. I got this one as a tiny $5 jelly bean-sized frag (it has since then grew in size and increased in quantity of polyps):

I lucked out with the purple/green ones (shown in post #1 of this thread). I had been eyeing them for quite a while. They were being sold in four or five polyp frags but were quite pricey so I passed on them. Then one day the LFS put out an advertisement in a paper which said 'all saltwater live stock 50% off, one purchase', which brought it down to my price range.

However, it turns out the wording of the ad wasn't what the LFS intended. They told me they meant the ad to read 'buy 1 get the 2nd 50% off' but the advertisement company got it wrong. I was the first customer to come in with the coupon so he decided to honor the coupon as printed. It has since gone from a 5 polyp'd acan frag to a 35+ polyp acan colony.

 

[FTMMWS]

Very colorful ,,looks great

 

[Adio800]

Great tank love ur acans

 

[scubasteve03]

How do you get them to grow consitantly. I have had one for about a yr and its not growing that much any thing special you have tried

 

[redsea]

Very nice coral!

 

[kay-bee19]

How do you get them to grow consitantly. I have had one for about a yr and its not growing that much any thing special you have tried

In addition to keeping calcium levels over 400ppm (my target level is 420ppm), my experience with these acans is they seem to really benefit from regular feeding. There was a time when I would feed them mysis shrimp on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, as many of the polyps as I could.

I rarely specifically feed my corals these days but have noticed a difference in the growth rate among the acans from when I did. Growth in colony size continues but apparently not as fast.

Feeding isn't required but I think that feeding provides additional nourishment to the coral which can translate into greater growth rate (as it is in addition to the energy provided by the symbiotic zooxanthellae algae contained within photosynthetic corals).

With that said, I have some LPS corals that I've never fed that have had significant growth. For example the frogspawn that I acquired as a tiny single-polyped frag (see post #4 of this thread) has never been fed. I've tried feeding it but it has always had a really weak grip on mysis shrimp and would drop them even when tank circulation was turned off. Its tentacles would not capture the food as acan's or even as torch coral do.

However this 'never-fed' frogspawn is now the largest stony coral in the tank, and perhaps is second only to my trumpet corals in sheer growth rate (I've removed over 70-heads of trumpet coral from this tank). Here's a top view shot of this frogspawn, its size isn't represented well in the full tank shot:

 

[scubasteve03]

My calcium is at 500 ppm steady is it posible it is to high for the acan also I have tryed to feed it mysis but with no luck like your frog spawn it seems to not get a good grim on it. What I did try was reef roids along with marin snow and it seems to feed on it some what. It opens fully and seem to be triveing just no groth as far as colony size groth oh and nice frog spawn masive lol. I do like that red acan in the bottom left of your pic beautiful color