MASRQ
Marine Aquarium Society of Regional QueenslandMark's tank
The 7' tank resides in a smallish room of its own, which is located directly behind the living room wall (this was designed into the house plans). This room has an exhaust fan running at all times except when the air conditioner is running (which isn’t too often now that I have a chiller). Without the exhaust fan the humidity in the room gets unbearable!
The wall cut-out is 6 X 2ft to give room to hide the ugly but necessary things (tunze streams, return plumbing etc). That way all you see from the living room is reef / fish. Livestock includes various hard/soft corals, blue linka starfish, about few hermit crabs and snails. Fish include a yellow shoulder tang, yellow tang, blue tang, bicolour angel, coral beauty, 2 X B&W clowns, some chromis and a small gobie.
The sump is a rainwater tank with a hinged lid (sunk 1/3 of the way into the ground) which holds around 400L. Within this tank there’s a home made beckett skimmer, some float switches and return / skimmer pumps.
Cooling is via a 1HP Halea chiller set at around 27deg C and this is supplemented by 2 X 24v fans in the sump and fan blowing across the top of the tank. I also have a split a/c in the room which is purely an emergency backup to the chiller. The fans are controlled by a butchered up digital thermostat that Jaycar sell which lets me set on/off temperatures. I wouldn’t call it perfect but it switches on/off the fans within about 1.5°C.
Auto freshwater top up is via a float switch in sump which runs 2 inline solenoids fed into an R/O unit. I also have a separate float valve set above the normal level as a "safety backup" to avoid freshwater flooding!
For alkalinity and calcium I dose dissolved bi-carb and dissolved calcium chloride via an auqametic dual doser. I try and aim to keep my alkalinity at around 7-10dkh and calcium at around 420 - 450ppm.
I change about 600L of water every 6-8 weeks. I collect NSW and store about 5000L at a time via a 3500L tank up the corner of the backyard and a few 500L bunnings tanks. This is 3500L tank plumbed to the sump for easy water changes. I use to collect water via a 640L carting tank and an old 4 stroke pump but with a new pump and some co-operation from the neighbours behind me (and a few 6 packs / bottles of wine) I pump it straight up from the local beach via 170m of 25mm poly pipe. It takes me a day to collect around a years supply of water which is a lot quicker that the old method of running back and forth with a ute/trailer. One of the drawbacks with the local beach water is I can only pump on tides above 3m and the quality can be a bit average it times so its case if trying to time it all right with the weather and being home at the right time (generally mid year is best).
I have recently added a 4ft tank to the system which sits outside under
there eves as more of an experiment than anything else. It has some frag’s
and calerpa which get around 3 hrs/day of direct sunlight. Without the
chiller this would not be possible in the summertime!
At a glance...
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Tank dimensions |
7L X 2W X 2.5H feet (=approx 950 L), with corner overflow and 400L sump |
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Pumps |
Internal: Tunz 6060 / tunze 6100 |
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Lighting |
Daylight: 3 X 250wMH with sunnylight
reflectors (2 X 14k 1 X 20k in the middle) |
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Skimmer |
homemade approx 4ft long with beckett venturi |
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Cooling |
Halea 1HP chiller |
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Freshwater topup |
Auto via a float switch in sump (runs 2 inline solenoids fed into a R/O unit) |
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Additives |
20 L drum of dissolved bi-carb / 10l drum of dissolved calcium
chloride |
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Water changes |
NSW - 600L every 6-8 weeks |
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Livestock |
Corals: pocillopora / turbinara / acropra / galaxia / fungia
/ heliofungua / birdsnest / various brain corals / hammer / leather
/ Duncan corals / anenome's |
More pictures (click on the thumbnails for a larger view)
