Luc Vogels's 600+ gallon CoralCare Reef

[FishTankMafia]

Luc, this is awesome man! Absolutely awesome. You've inspired me to go with CoralCare for my new tank. 243cm x 121cm x 68cm. Can you advise me on how many CoralCares to buy to blanket the tank in enough par to grow SPS everywhere? Is it possible to do this without shadowing on the underside of acros with these lights? I always felt like T5 tubes reflected off the glass better than LEDs and minimized coral shadowing as a result. Really hoping these have a similar effect due to their diffusion. Do I need 4 lamps? 8 lamps?

 

[Luc Vogels]

Luc, this is awesome man! Absolutely awesome. You've inspired me to go with CoralCare for my new tank. 243cm x 121cm x 68cm. Can you advise me on how many CoralCares to buy to blanket the tank in enough par to grow SPS everywhere? Is it possible to do this without shadowing on the underside of acros with these lights? I always felt like T5 tubes reflected off the glass better than LEDs and minimized coral shadowing as a result. Really hoping these have a similar effect due to their diffusion. Do I need 4 lamps? 8 lamps?

Good to hear . The importance of keeping aquarium glass clean is something which is underestimated by most reefers. Clean glass is a good reflector of light (up to certain angles) and indeed helps to spread the light even further throughout the tank. If you want to have a truely homogeneous light distribution I recommend to use 8 lamps. 4 is not realistic.

 

[Luc Vogels]

Some recent images of my tank.

 

[mitten_reef]

Some recent images of my tank.

That's stunning!

 

[Cstar_BC]

Wow ! All your colonies have matured and blended so nicely . Almost no empty space in there .

looks amazing !

 

[Luc Vogels]

That's stunning!

thank you!

Wow ! All your colonies have matured and blended so nicely . Almost no empty space in there .

looks amazing !

yes that is becoming a problem . Need to frag on monthly basis to prevent overgrowth

 

[Cstar_BC]

thank you!
yes that is becoming a problem . Need to frag on monthly basis to prevent overgrowth

i wish I had that problem

 

[Luc Vogels]

I would like to share some recent images of my tank.

The tank is doing great and the corals keep growing well.
This time I have taken pictures of the tank in the evening, that's why they look a bit more bluish than usual.

Some further news...
Upcoming January we are moving into a new home; that means the tank needs to be emptied soon .

We will start by moving the tank to the garage of the new house; from there I am going to take my time to plan for a new system.
This will cost a lot of time and stress but the new house offers great possibilities for a new (larger) tank so that is something to look forward to! Family comes first so my priority is on getting the house done... after that I will be planning (and sharing) the ideas I have for my new tank.

In the meantime, I have already included an additional biologic filter to my existing system (containing about 200 kilograms of rock). This will serve as a biological stabalizer the moment the move takes place.
This filter will be the first to move to the new house and in the following two weeks all corals and fish will be moved.
To be continued...

 

[BranchingHammer]

Looks great!

 

[Ashish Patel]

Wow = great to see this tank come back to life and thriving. Good luck on the new house and future plans!

 

[CoralVue_Marketing]

I would like to share some recent images of my tank.

The tank is doing great and the corals keep growing well.
This time I have taken pictures of the tank in the evening, that's why they look a bit more bluish than usual.

Some further news...
Upcoming January we are moving into a new home; that means the tank needs to be emptied soon .

We will start by moving the tank to the garage of the new house; from there I am going to take my time to plan for a new system.
This will cost a lot of time and stress but the new house offers great possibilities for a new (larger) tank so that is something to look forward to! Family comes first so my priority is on getting the house done... after that I will be planning (and sharing) the ideas I have for my new tank.

In the meantime, I have already included an additional biologic filter to my existing system (containing about 200 kilograms of rock). This will serve as a biological stabalizer the moment the move takes place.
This filter will be the first to move to the new house and in the following two weeks all corals and fish will be moved.
To be continued...

The colors look great!

 

[Luc Vogels]

Last thread update... November 2020 .
Since this time a lot of things changed; I moved and I am building a new tank!
The perfect moment to start updating this thread and describing what happened during the past year.

February 2020:

The last image of the tank in my old house.
The tank was doing great... I did not sleep well that night knowing what I needed the to do the next day.

My plan was to move all animals temporarily to the garage next to the new house so I could take my time to renovate and plan for a new tank. I realized in an early stage that I would need to have up to twice as much aquatic space to store all corals and fish (they were all packed together in the reef but during a move you are unable to stack them again in the same way).

Therefore, I planned to place my existing tank 2.00x70x80, my fragtank 220x70x40 and extra fragtank 200x50x40 in the garage. a few months ago, I also added a 600 liter plastic tank with 250 kilo rock in parallel to the system to ensure a quick kickstart of the bacterial culture after the move was done because I knew it was impossible to move all animals and equipment in a single day.

The next day we started at 8 in the morning to move the plastic tank with rocks, the fragtank and all filter equipment. After some hours we already realized we underestimated the amount of time it took to disconnect and move everything. mid-day we just moved the plastic tank... and it seemed to be one of the coldest days of the year in the Netherlands, streets were slippery and stress was building up... I had disconnected all my filter equipment already and there was no way back.. It became more and more difficult to move since the temperature went down quickly..

We then started to remove the remaining equipment (calcium reactor; dosing pump ATO etc) photographing the cable work so we could re-install it quickly in the new location.

removal of the ATO. This tank contained RO water but I also used it to do water changes.

After that I removed the corals from the fragtank and we tried to move the tank itself.
Luckily I had good help and the move of this one went quite smoothly

After some hours the first corals (the ones from the frag tank) were placed back into the water.. But the garage was freezing since the temperature was -10 degree outside and we had to open the garage door often to move the stuff inside. I added many heating elements to the tank but the temperature dropped to 21 degrees.. would the corals survive?... more and more stress was building up (both for the animals and me ).

The end of day 1.. 12 o clock in the night.. utter chaos.. At the same day the floor in the house was also redone (coating) so I could not access the house. I did not trust the system yet so there was one thing left... sleep next to the tank to keep an eye on it (my wife is still mocking me for this xD).

 

[Luc Vogels]

The next day... I didn't sleep that well as you can imagine. I quickly installed to pipe work so all systems connected to the main filters. Everything went OK until I got a call from my dad. He asked if I had already been outside...

What? SNOW?

Of all the days in the year (it does not snow that often in the Netherlands)...it was the coldest and worst type of weather I could ever imagine (but it was a beautiful sight).

My main tank was still running without any filters (only heating and flow) so we continued moving animals from house to house (5km drive) but it took us one hour each time because of the bad road conditions. I also was not able to move to many animals at the same time because the water cooled down too quickly.

Around 13.00 I moved half of the animals.

And around 16.00 the tank was empty. I decided to keep the tank there until the weather conditions improved (too dangerous to drive around with such load)

I quickly installed some lighting above the tank and made sure the corals were not touching.

 

[Luc Vogels]

Not bad for 2 days of work right?

During the move I had to handle my red Lobophyllia.. I have had this coral for over 12 years!
I can still remember the moment I bought this coral.. the size of a fist and it costed me 30 euros.
During my student time I fed this coral on a daily bases and thought it would weigh at least 15 kilograms. I had to reach down in the tank to grab the coral.. I thought it would be easy until I lifted it up further and further. It was extremely heavy and its skeleton pushed in my skin.. the coral weights over 25 kilogram . I could only find an Ikea box which could fit the coral. Closed the box and went straight to the new house.

This time my dad helped me carry it back into the water. Mission successful!

5 days later I also moved the old display tank. The water volume totaled over 2500 liters. I did not lose any coral and only one small wrasse. Water values stabalized quickly and the corals were doing OK.

This is what the system looked like one week later:

To be continued! Next: planning and building the new tank

 

[Daniel@R2R]

AWESOME!!!! Definitely keep us posted on the new tank!!

 

[GBRsouth]

You know you're the first person to be able to say you've been "sleeping with the fishes"! The rest never got to tell anyone!

 

[reefiniteasy]

Following. This is amazing and your tank was absolutely gorgeous! Also, thank you for your contributions to the hobby.

 

[jhuntstl]

Happy to see you're back! Perfect timing as there are a lot of new CoralCare owners as of recent.

You're last FTS is absolutely stunning! That was one heck of a move you pulled off and against some unexpected odds. I probably would've slept next to the tanks too.

 

[jacky.l]

A lot of work. Look forward to your new tank. I like new Coralcare and hope to sell in China

 

[Luc Vogels]

AWESOME!!!! Definitely keep us posted on the new tank!!

Thank you! I will.

You know you're the first person to be able to say you've been "sleeping with the fishes"! The rest never got to tell anyone!

haha.. agree!

Following. This is amazing and your tank was absolutely gorgeous! Also, thank you for your contributions to the hobby.

I still have a lot of fun with the hobby.. Think this is the 15th year?

Happy to see you're back! Perfect timing as there are a lot of new CoralCare owners as of recent.

You're last FTS is absolutely stunning! That was one heck of a move you pulled off and against some unexpected odds. I probably would've slept next to the tanks too.

A lot of work. Look forward to your new tank. I like new Coralcare and hope to sell in China

Thank you