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I simply wanted to contribute my experiences in hopefully establishing a successful low-tech reef tank. Not everyone can afford the metal halide lights, CA reactors, or UV sterilizers. It is really frustrating hearing from anyone that you must do something this way or that way. I figured if I can keep a planted discus tank for over two years with NO lighting and DIY yeast CO2 reactor, I thought I’d try my hand at reefkeeping. Do what works for you and in the end, that will be the most rewarding thing to you and your tank. Hopefully someone out there will take something from this series of writings and ramblings and get some use out of it.

After successfully keeping freshwater tanks for over a period of 5 years or so, I decided it was time to convert one of the tanks to a reef tank. My thinking was if I can keep a planted discus tank, why shouldn’t I be able to keep a reef tank? Well, being the miser that I am, I refused to go out and buy more equipment for this new adventure. The following is what I had to work with to start:

55 gallon glass aquarium

Custom stand and hood.

160 watts of NO Full Spectrum Lighting

1 Eheim 2213 Canister Filter w/ Surface Extractor

1 Fluval 303 Canister Filter

2 Whisper 640 PowerHeads

That’s about all I had to start out with. After convincing the wife that this would be the best thing in the world for our living room, I set out to build me a reef tank!

One evening, I tore down the 55 gallon discus tank and transplanted everything into another tank. That same night, my wife and I scrubbed the 55 down thoroughly and set it back up. Soon after, it had about 2" of Carib-Sea substrate and 50 gallons or so of Instant Ocean seawater. Needless to say I went to bed around 2:30am that night.

Two days later, I set out to purchase some live rock. I went to my LFS and purchased 80lbs. of fiji rock and I felt that I had been mugged and beaten when the clerk told me my total. Anyhow, this was soo exciting for me that it really did not matter. I had some rock that smelled bad, had all sorts of creatures on it, and best of all, made me happy. When I got home, I proceeded to stack the rock in order to resemble that of a reef. When I was done, I still needed more rock. More rock had to wait however.

Two weeks went by as I cycled the tank with a handful of damsels and the live rock.

All the while, I am reading how protein skimmers are an essential part of a successful reef tank. "I do have two canisters which is really overkill for filtration" I thought to myself. Then, everyone I asked basically said the same thing, "You don’t have to have a protein skimmer, but I would if I were you!" Well, I then had to have one. I set out and purchased an air driven counter current hang-on model manufactured by a company in Houston, Texas called Precision Marine(http://www.precisionmarine.com). In addition to the skimmer, I also bought a Tetra-Luft air pump. I decided to use the return of the eheim into a ball-valve to feed the skimmer. With the surface extractor on the Eheim, this turned out to work fairly well. Next, you guessed it, I installed the skimmer. Like everyone else, I was amazed at the impurities this pulled out of the water I thought was already pristine.

In a matter of three weeks, the tank had cycled and I had to get some sort of coral to make me happy. I went out and purchased an open brain, star polyps, button polyps, and some mushroom rock.

Over the next week or so I added two coral banded shrimp and a cleaner shrimp. At the end of the first month, I did a 20%wc and cleaned the floss in the fluval303 weekly.

Despite this maintenance, I constantly battled brown algae all over the rocks and substrate.

As of September 26^th, I had the following inhabitants:

80lbs. Fiji Live Rock

2 Coral Banded Shrimp(1 looks to be pregnant)

1 Cleaner Shrimp

1 Open Brain Coral

1 Star Polyps

1 Mushroom Rock

1 Damsel

1 Yellow Tang

8 Large Turbo Snails

A little about the hardware up to this point.

The Eheim is full of bioballs only. It pulls water in through its surface extractor and the output feeds the CC skimmer The Fluval is full of floss that gets changed weekly and also a small amount of activated carbon that runs continuously. The skimmer is driven with a Tetra Luft air pump and one 3" wooden airstone.

Lighting consisting of the following bulbs:

• 1- Coralife Actinic Blue 30watt
• 1- Triton 30watt
• 2 Spectrum V 30watt
• 2 - Coralife Trichromatic 6500K 20watt

I add Kent Marine Tectra Series CB A and B daily as directed. Weekly, I add half of the directed dosage of Kent Marine’s Essential Elements and the Kent Marine’s Tectra-I iodine.

 In the next installment, I hope to cover the addition of more corals, rock and hopefully, less algae problems.

The picture should help explain the setup: