Finally showcasing my SPS monster... 1300 gallon display... 2000 gallon system... and many past displays

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copps

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The 240 of course grew in quickly...

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Here you can see two different groups of cardinals I have... I love cardinals... so cool to see a fish that will school in even small systems...

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The tank got away from what I really wanted to display... so I made room for my anemones... mainly my gigantea collection... while I may be an SPS guy, is there really any animal as beautiful as Stichodactyla gigantea? Here's a top shot of my giant green one...

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And I do have many bubble tips in there too...

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copps

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But they take a back seat to my gigantea... here's a shot of the left side of the tank... just what I've always wanted... a BLANKET of all colors of gigantea... from left to right... a multicolor purple... my giant green... a rainbow... and a blue... this species is just incredible...

DZXtcgt.jpg


I’ve since moved the multicolor purple to the 1300, along with a large blue I have in the 1300…

I've always had a particular passion for magnifica and gigantea anemones. I've owned the same three magnifica and four gigantea for years now.



Below is a shot of my three magnifica situated on an island in the center of my 1300 display. When my displays were smaller I was never one to want to keep anemones with my sps. With encouragement from fellow NY Italian Joe Yaiullo I bucked this fear making an island in the center of my display. If magnifica are happy with their spot, they won't walk across a sandbed and will stay put on their rocks... and this has held true for years now. With the exception of earlier this year in 2020 when one of my magnifica started walked after getting shaded by an Acro. I tried forever to get it to stay again, and ended up moving it to the mixed reef where it is happy now.



I started with the standard (but beautiful) bright purple base magnifica. This is shown to the left in the photo below. The center anemone is the blood red base type, and actually glows green under blue light. The third magnifica to the right is an incredible specimen and bright purple. This shot is a bit dated and these three have grown huge... and what a site they are!

lrk8KdP.jpg
 
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In the above shot you can see the one large blue gigantea I keep in the 1300. Again after years of keeping gigantea I've realized them to not really eat healthy fish. That, combined with my ability to keep gigantea in place by getting their foot attached in a flower pot, gave me the confidence to put a gigantea in the 1300 a few years ago, and I now have two in the 1300 and two in the mixed reef. This tank gets blasted with light and this particular gigantea has grown at a much faster clip than the others I keep in my anemone tank. The anemone tank has 400 watt 20K Radiums... my display uses 400 watt 14K Ushios, along with other supplemented light. I do not supplementally feed my anemones, except on rare occasions to show friends how they close like a venus fly trap.



Ok… that’s a good start for R2R! I should be able to get updated photos next month to share here after I swap my Kydex out. I’m the speaker coordinator for our local reef club here in DC called WAMAS (perhaps the largest reef club in the country). Before COVID we were meeting four times a year, and a small group of us would hang out along with the speaker and I’d swap my Kydex out before that meeting… with COVID I’ve gotten lazy with that but should have time next month.

Thanks in advance to R2R and the community guys!

Copps
 

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Thank you for sharing your amazing tanks! What a commitment to the hobby you’ve made.
 

andrewkw

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Wow! Thanks so much for posting all of this. I really enjoyed reading each and every post in this thread and learned a few things that can be applied to much smaller systems. I recall seeing several of your tanks on reef central over the years. To say I am amazed with your displays would be an understatement. Also just so you know you link your TOTM pages and threads here. Reef2Reef doesn't have a "clay boa" equivalent for reef central.
 
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Your 180 was freakin awesome and gets me excited as I’m looking to get a tank with the same dimensions
Thanks... I worked very hard in high school bagging fish for minimum wage to pay for that tank nearly 30 years ago... I'd recommend instead of 24" wide though you go 36"... it allows for much better aquascaping opportunities
 
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copps

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Thank you for sharing your amazing tanks! What a commitment to the hobby you’ve made.
Thank you... my wife says something similar... that I should be committed!:p

Wow! Thanks so much for posting all of this. I really enjoyed reading each and every post in this thread and learned a few things that can be applied to much smaller systems. I recall seeing several of your tanks on reef central over the years. To say I am amazed with your displays would be an understatement. Also just so you know you link your TOTM pages and threads here. Reef2Reef doesn't have a "clay boa" equivalent for reef central.
Excellent, and thank you... here is my old 65 gallon article from 2004... I still have the tomini tang from that tank, and the Solomon Islands perc that was in the kitchen nano...

And here is my old system profiled from 2009... most of my methodologies remain the same...



Thanks for sharing your beautiful tanks and your personal journey.
Thank you... and nice largemouth! I spent half of my childhood fishing on the lake I grew up on in North Jersey. :)
 

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Wow! Awesome build.
 

Smarkow

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Thanks for sharing. Followed you on “the other board” but in rereading this it felt like watching a classic movie I’ve seen a bunch of times already... but still can’t turn off :)

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Reefahholic

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I called up Joe Yaiullo at the Long Island Aquarium... a good friend and an inspiration for my system... he's a fellow NY Italian and he has that mix of technical and artistic traits required to have an amazing system... if you have not seen his 20,000 gallon reef you should plan to. He had been looking for a gigas clam and I had planned down the line to give this to him... but that spawn expedited it. I planned the trip and my father, myself, and my son drove this baby up... the clam was about 60 to 70 pounds... here's Joe receiving it... happy as a clam... notice the white ring of growth on this baby... the shell was almost 30 inches from tip to tip...

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My son about to hand the clam to Joe... getting in the tank...

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Joe almost fell over with it in the tank... it was funny because we got there after hours, and the facility was rented out by the fire department... all of these guys and gals dressed up... and there were wrestling a clam and guiding it into place...

t8Ya5HN.jpg
I bet that thing was sucking up some serious calcium.
 

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But they take a back seat to my gigantea... here's a shot of the left side of the tank... just what I've always wanted... a BLANKET of all colors of gigantea... from left to right... a multicolor purple... my giant green... a rainbow... and a blue... this species is just incredible...

DZXtcgt.jpg


I’ve since moved the multicolor purple to the 1300, along with a large blue I have in the 1300…

I've always had a particular passion for magnifica and gigantea anemones. I've owned the same three magnifica and four gigantea for years now.



Below is a shot of my three magnifica situated on an island in the center of my 1300 display. When my displays were smaller I was never one to want to keep anemones with my sps. With encouragement from fellow NY Italian Joe Yaiullo I bucked this fear making an island in the center of my display. If magnifica are happy with their spot, they won't walk across a sandbed and will stay put on their rocks... and this has held true for years now. With the exception of earlier this year in 2020 when one of my magnifica started walked after getting shaded by an Acro. I tried forever to get it to stay again, and ended up moving it to the mixed reef where it is happy now.



I started with the standard (but beautiful) bright purple base magnifica. This is shown to the left in the photo below. The center anemone is the blood red base type, and actually glows green under blue light. The third magnifica to the right is an incredible specimen and bright purple. This shot is a bit dated and these three have grown huge... and what a site they are!

lrk8KdP.jpg
You gonna make @OrionN Jealous with these beauty's. :)
 
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