Denis' 150 Gallon Masterpiece
Congratulations to Denis for being selected as Canreef's Featured Tank of the Month for June 2010. Thanks, Denis, for sharing your system details with us! Please click on the thumbnails to view larger photos.
Thank you choosing my humble reef as TOTM. My fascination about reef tanks got started at the Vancouver aquarium in 1990. From then on I drew most of the information necessary for building my own equipment from two books, Albert Thiele's Advanced Reef Keeping and Martin Moe's Marine Aquarium Reference, that I purchased in the Vancouver Aquarium gift shop.
There was not much else you could do those days. I kept mostly LPS, softies and lots of anemones. This was in a 90 gallon tank I kept moving from place to place. When I finally upgraded to 150g (and my life to married status) I was fully into SPS; that was 1999. I'm still using the same tank and most of the live rock.
When we moved into a house in Abbotsford, I got to use a space in the basement. That's when things really got out of control. I had 4 grow tanks set up in short order in two separate systems, one for softies and one for SPS. I had to build two skimmers, one for each setup. That went on for few years until I got tired of maintaining it all and made a choice to shut down the softies. The only reminder today is the second skimmer.
I love my grow tank, it's really nice to have a space to stash away extra frags and have room to grow out more for trade. It's usually packed pretty good as my upstairs tank needs pruning a lot. I do sell to hobbyists mostly during winter when I have more time for the hobby. One question I do get asked during visits is if I dose any additives. Well I don't, and don't plan to. I use cheap salt (IO) and only adjust the basics if I need to. One thing that might be helping me is two barrels full of live rock plumbed into the system, giving me extra biological filtration. I have never had any nitrates and phosphates but I do get decent algae growth that I have to control. I don't think I have anything special going on here, just the results of 8 years of growth and sometimes I wish it wouldn't grow so much. It's just like a garden, you have to keep pruning and once in a while a section needs complete overhaul. As you can tell the middle section in my tank is undergoing bit of a reno at the moment.
Technology and automation are a major part of my interest in this hobby. Not only does the automation help stabilize the living conditions in the tank, it also allows me to take it easy in my lazy days. And I have a good share of those.
As DIY guy there is always something I need to do. The list of upcoming projects include, a new 12" skimmer, fish room re-design, more automation and more monitoring. But time and money is usually in short supply, especially since they compete with my other hobbies.
As you can tell I'm not very good at writing stories, and I can assure you I wasn't any better in my native Czech language. I'm much more inclined to a chat over a cold Guinness. Thanks again everyone and specially Canreef staff. And remember if I can do it, so can you.
