thebanker's 56 gallon

I have to join in on the compliments, great looking tank. The tank has such a clean look to it. Do you do anything to specifically target nuisance algae growth? Or are you just lucky. I hope one day to have a tank like that. Great Job!

 

You have a tank???
Looks great!

 

Wow you guys are all really nice, thank you all for the overwhelming compliments.

Thanks Steve. I can't take the credit for those pics though. My friend Bao Phan from EcoSystem Aquarium took most of those pictures, since he has the DSLR skills.

Being a banker isn't as fun as being a reefkeeper, that's for sure.

Thanks Matt! I'll add a short writeup on my routine.

Thanks, and I've had my filefish since Nov 2010. It eats aiptasia like Cheez-Its, but when those are picked clean, he'll nibble on the occasional coral, but never to the point of being destructive. He's certainly tried all of them, but the only ones he eats are aiptasia and turbinaria. So no cup corals for me.

Thanks but believe me, I'm always learning. That's my favorite part of this hobby.

I have about 15-20 Mexican turbo snails, that eat everything, except for bryopsis and thick GHA. Occasionally, I'll need to yank an odd clump of hair algae or bryopsis, it's just part of the maintenance it seems.

Yes, I'm not just a hiarious and/or awesome off topic poster.

 

Who knew!

 

hey man great looking tank.great colors and everything looks real happy..

 

That's a great looking tank! I love the variety of colors!

 

Here's some info on how I maintain my tank.

My filtration system is primarily a Ecosystem Pro 60 HOB refugium. It has miracle mud as a substrate, and chaetomorpha grows like crazy from a T8 bulb that illuminates it for 15 hours/day. All the water my HOB fuge receives passes through a modified TLF150 reactor with vertex biopellets, and an improvised skimmer (really crappy modified skimmer chamber of my fuge). I use another TLF150 to hold GFO for phosphate control. Under the tank, I have a canister with activated carbon I change once every month. I'm really lazy about changing that. I barely do water changes. Top off is an automatic humanoid-sensor system: I walk by the tank and if it looks a tad low, my brain automatically tells me to dump some water in it. Since my tank is sumpless, I use a Tom Aquatics surface skimmer to clean the water's surface of organic film.

My light system is a 4 x 54 watt T5, the Current USA Nova Extreme. Bulbs are ATI blue plus, ATI Aquablue Special, KZ Fiji Purple, and KZ superblue.

I dose Seachem Reef Fusion 2-Part, every other day. Sometimes I'll play with other additives, but I can't find anything that really makes a big difference. Oyster feast is the occasional coral food of choice, and SPS seems to love it.

That's about it!

 

Oh my goodness - your tank is absolutely gorgeous!!! Your coral and fish are all so healthy looking!

I've been thinking about trying SeaChem's Reef Fusion..I think you just convinced me

 

Do you have any back dated images, the banker

so we can see the progression of the set up, to how it looks today?

Steve