Mitch's 75 Gallon Peninsula Reef

[MitchReef]

Hi everyone, my name is Mitch C and I am a Reefer....

As I stated in the title, my display is a 75 Gallon which is just about an entirely DIY system. Even the tank itself was a throw away that I got and resealed, end drilled and fitted with a homemade false wall / overflow with integrated frag shelf. The overflow piping is a modified Herbie system that flows down and is divided between a 10 gallon fuge and a Rubbermaid sump. The sump holds an Octopus 110NW and an Ebo-Jaeger heater. I make my own water and use a DIY ATO with redundant float switches powering an Aqualifter pump. I dose with Oceans Blend two-part through a DIY peristaltic pump dosing system, adding at 3AM and 3PM. For Magnesium I use Epsom Salt.

Lighting consists of Phoenix 250W on one end and 150W on the other end supplemented with two Geisemann Actinic-plus T5HO's in Tec2 reflectors. The T5's are on from noon til 11:00PM and the MH's come on at 3:30PM and run til 10:30PM. I use very low blue LED night lighting.

Flow is from a BlueLine 1100 return pump and two Koralia 4's with two powerheads on a wavemaker just to disrupt flow patterns. I keep the whole mess cool with a ducted fan blowing across the water surface and another exhausting from the fully enclosed hood. It makes about 3 1/2 gallons a day of evaporation which equates to almost 34,000 BTU of cooling. I maintain 78 degrees just from that.

My 8 year old daughter, Emma, loves to name the critters, so here we go. My CUC is made up of a big black cucumber named Turd Ferguson, a couple of huge Mexican Turbos, and a few regular Turbos, an Money Cowrie, a couple Fuzzy Chitons, some Stomatellas and a big gray Serpent Star named Lumpy.

Fish are Dot, the One Spot Foxface; Sunny the Tomingi Tang; Pogo the Possum Wrasse (I named that one, anybody as old as me might recognize the significance of the name); Dizzy is a Priolepis ascensionis, Ascension Goby; Emmett and Kelly are Misbar Ocellaris', Lennie the Blennie is a Starry Blennie. Finally The Blue Crew is my two Blue-Green Chromis'.

I will start a second post regarding the Corals.

 

[SPStoner]

Very Nice!

 

[underwaterfirefighter]

Nice looking set up.

 

[MitchReef]

I have quite a few different corals stuffed into this relatively small 75 gallon reef, leaning toward a domination of SPS. I guess my show-pieces are my Acropora desalwii colony and my ORA Chip's acropora colony...

I have quite a few Acroporae, including the following: ORA Blue millepora, ORA Rose millepora, ugly yellow millepora, ORA Marshallo Island Blue Bottlebrush, ORA Borealis, ORA Cali tort and ORA Oregon Blue tort, Rick's Purple Slimer,JuicyCoral's Quadricolor acro, Greg Hillers Aquadelight, ORA Hawkins Blue echinata, JuicyCorals Neon Flashlight Acropora chesterfieldensis, a nice no name blue-green Acropora echinata, no name Fiji green Acropora qith pink polyps and tips, Tri-color Acropora valida, two different no name green Acroporae and a Blueberry Lemonade A nasuta. There are probably others in there that I missed, but that's okay.

Montiporae include a big grown out M. confusa, Purple M. cap, Orange M. cap (that I'm getting rid of for the Real Estate), Tyree Idaho Grape, bright green M. digitata, ORA German blue-polyp M. digitata, generic ugly M. undata, a blue-polyp purple M. cap (timy browned out frag). Encrusting Montiporae include Tyree Seasons Greeting, Tyree Sunset, Tyree Rainbow, ATL Appleberry, and a nice original Superman and a tiny frag of UWW Rainboe Sunburst.

I only have a very few chalices, including Juicycoral's Ancient Earth chalice, WWC Golddigger, BGWMASGM....chalice and Monkey Butt pink chalice.

Favias include Juicycorals Area 51 (soul searcher), Tyree Dragon Soul, Juicycorals Purple Alien Eye and a really sweet non-lineage neon green one that I've seen called Green Hornet as well as Green Goblin. There is also another little no name one acquired from my friend Jose (DaddyBoriqua). I also have a beautiful Hot Pink and Neon Green Trachyphillia geofferoi that my clownfish think is their anemonae. There is also the original colony of Mitch's Skitzo Blastos, as seen on Juicycorals.com, and the requisite mint candy-cane colony.

Birdsnests include ORA Neon Green polyped, ORA Hyacinth, ORA Bird of Paradise and a generic purple-polyp gold with green tips.

I also have a little ATL Meteor Shower Cyphastrea.

I have various zoas and palys including Mitch's Pinwheel zoas, Green Men From Mars palys, Whammin Watermellons, Bible Sue's teal palys, Iceman zoas, as well as an assortment of pink, green and other zoas, palys and protopalys. There are also Red as well as Metallic Green-striped mushrooms and a Corky Sea-fingers and a little colony of GSP.

I'm sure I missed a few, but that gives you the idea....here are a few random pictures of my colonies and frags, as well as a few frags I have parted with.

Please excuse some of the pictures, I use a Point and Shoot.

 

[TropicalReefCorals]

That's a LOT of corals in one tank. Lookin good!
Do you have a good picture of your ORA Borealis?

Rick & Terry
Tropical Reef Corals

 

[MitchReef]

Thanks, at one time I counted 87 varieties of corals and it's a 75G Display. I've recently cleaned house with regard to a lot of the stuff from the sandbed.

Here is a pic of my Borealis:

That's a tough coral to photograph well because it is just far more colorful in person. It's also usually fairly shaggy.

 

[skinz78]

Looking great! How long have you had the Borealis for? It looks awesome in the pic!

 

[BattlesReef]

Great looking tank! man that thing is packed with coral. looks really nice.

 

[btkrausen]

Nice, looks like you have some nice acros in there. How long have you had them? Did you grow them out from frags?

 

[justinm]

I likey the tank very much, would love to see the growth of all those frags.

 

[MitchReef]

Thanks a lot for the comments. I've pretty much grown everything in all my pics from frags. The ORA Chip's Acro colony came from a 1/2 inch single stick incidental frag. It's picture 2 in my second post. The one just before that is a colony that I grew from a nice wide inch and a half frag. That one is Acropora desalwii. I lost both of those....Folks have offered me frags back but I'm not really interested in those anymore....

Believe it or not, I've had the Borealis for about 20 months! But, I sold it off and kept a big frag once....it's really used to my tank so it just kept rocking on.....

These are pics of my ORA Oregon Blue Tort from the original colony in Oregon!

That was taken 1/3/10
And this was last week.

The frag was glued down to an inch and a quarter square WWC Tile and now the base is about 2 inches across. Not bad for a notorious slow grower.

 

[dougers31]

Nice pics, love the sps! Just be careful about using epsom salt since its mag sulfate and if you use it exclusively sulfates can build up in your tank. If you're doing frequent water changes it prolly won't be an issue.

 

[MitchReef]

I basically never do water changes. I've used Epsom Salt for most of the last three and a half years. Lately I've been using Oceans Blend Magnesium supplement, which is based on Magnesium Chloride. No ill effects that I can see so far.

 

[Alattner]

really nice set up man. you have some really nice sps i love your monti

 

[akabryanhall]

As always, I enjoy looking at your tank very much, always better in person though!!

 

[dougers31]

I basically never do water changes. I've used Epsom Salt for most of the last three and a half years. Lately I've been using Oceans Blend Magnesium supplement, which is based on Magnesium Chloride. No ill effects that I can see so far.

Mag. chloride is usually the best option if you go with just one, with a mix of the two 2(?) to 1 ratio being ideal. Just repeating what I've heard from some experienced reef keepers...

 

[MitchReef]

Yup...I know....I have actualy been in the hobby as long as most....I set up a 20L Reef tank in 1986....it was hard to get the stuff you needed but we tried. I had a bunch of ugly brown corals but I ran it for 6 years......