The following report may well get me into trouble for revealing what seems to be a massive conspiracy perpetuated for all the years that I’ve been keeping fish, so here goes nothing – marines are easy to keep! There you go, now before the coral-keeping elite come for me, let me tell you how you too can set up an idiot-proof reef in a box without needing a degree in applied chemistry or marine biology.
 
Like many things in life, the secret is not to stand in the way of nature. By using liverock as the heart of your system, you invite a multitude of creatures into your home that function just as they would in the ocean and ensure that your aquarium is a success. Frankly, these little bugs and bacteria don’t care if they’re in Fulham or Fiji, if conditions are right they’ll just do their thing. So based on this philosophy, let’s start at the very beginning....
 
It may seem like stating the obvious but you need an aquarium to keep your reef in. I was lucky enough to time my new set up with the arrival of a very nice range of tanks and cabinets in an oak finish that would sit nicely with the rest of the furniture. Choose your tank and cabinet wisely, it won’t grow and they seldom improve with age, so try and get it right first time to avoid the stress and hassle of moving a mature reef from one tank to another. Pick the largest tank you can fit into the allocated space and be prepared for it to look pretty big until you fill it with water and the novelty wears off. At this point it’s a very good idea to ensure that everyone in the home is onside and shares your vision for a slice of nature’s richest realm in the corner of the room. You have my blessing to use whatever means necessary from candlelit dinners to pizza in front of ‘Finding Nemo’, just remember to point out that virtually all common clownfish are captive bred.
 
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Armed with my new 110cm oak tank and cabinet, I had to think about what I hoped to do with it. Ever since I first saw the beautiful Bangaii Cardinalfish featured in an issue of TFH magazine back in 1996, I had decided that one day I would set up a tank and breed these glamorous mouthbrooders. Having seen the thriving colony at Tenerife’s Loro Parque a few years ago and spurred on by the success of a colleague I knew that this was what I wanted to do in my new reef tank. Having decided on my keystone species, everything else fell into place. Like my freshwater aquaria, this would be a biotope tank and would reflect a habitat and community that might be found in the wild (please note: if you’re not a nerd like me feel free to mix whatever compatible livestock takes your fancy!).
 
Some in-depth research and my own preferences meant that I decided to design my tank as a lagoon/rubble zone habitat and avoid the good old ‘wall of rocks’ style of aquarium layout. This meant constructing an open landscape with the illusion of space and the all-important liverock arranged in vertical columns. Therefore the first thing that I did after giving the tank a good clean was to stick a mirror on the back pane using silicone sealant. Straight away I’d doubled the apparent depth of the tank and made a nice shaped tank appear even wider and deeper. So, we had a background that would give an immediate impression of space and give me double the number of fish. As a cichlid keeper, I’d long been in the habit of using mirrors as a way of giving stroppy male fish a target for their aggression and I’m sure that the marines will also benefit from duplicating a wild situation where neighbouring territory holders can be seen and normal interactions can take place. Reflective backing was also added to the other panes where the viewing wasn’t a factor and this gave bounced even more light back into the tank. Due to the rather quirky shape of my tank, I had a couple of angles that wouldn’t be present in a more normal aquarium and the mirrored backing also hid these well.
 
To allow me to keep a good range of light-loving corals, lighting levels would need to be high. Metal halides are very bright but run very hot and consume a lot of power, plus I’d need to either remove or modify my lovely oak lid and I wasn’t too keen to do that. The other factor of having a room that you need sunglasses to enter was unlikely to win over my better half who would understandably object to me turning the dining room into a solarium. The answer came in the form of a mix of lighting. I decided to go with a background of T5 lamps and chose a 39 watt JBL Ultra solar marine Day combined with an Arcadia Marine white of the same wattage. Powered by a Hagen starter, they were certainly bright and the JBL reflectors made sure that all that intensity was focussed in the right direction. These two lamps would be boosted by some LED fixtures later on but for now they would provide all the light that I needed.
 
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Next priority was arranging a way in which the liverock could be positioned in columns without any risk of collapse from either fish or invertebrate activity. I planned to run the system with a deep sand bed and so I knew there would be a high likelihood that I would introduce burrowing animals that would increase the chances of a rock fall. Having seen a number of examples where solvent weld pipe had been used, I thought that there had to be a more discreet solution. Why not clear acrylic rods? They were pretty much as clear as I hoped the water would be and were certainly strong enough to act in a supportive role. Having obtained some 10mm acrylic and specialist cement, I created some vertical support rods by gluing them to squares of Perspex. Not only would this hold the piles of drilled rock upright but it provided some protection for the base of the aquarium, as all the weight would be on the Perspex. Luckily they were also fairly manoeuvrable once the sand was added, as typically I ended up shifting one of them to a better position when I added the rock. A few small pieces of ocean rock were added to the base of the structure to stop the liverock dropping below the substrate level
 
With the mirror and support rods in place, the next job was adding the substrate. As I mentioned above, I’m a fan of deep sand beds in marine aquaria – they give great nitrate control and serve as a source of invertebrate diversity that ensures that a certain amount of live food is always available to the fishes and invertebrates. Observations have shown that a number of species can thrive if kept with a healthy, productive sand bed that otherwise starve in home aquaria. I wanted my tank to be capable of producing enough in the way of copepods and amphipods to feed any baby cardinals that came along unnoticed. The temptation with productive sand beds is to stock fish that will rapidly deplete invert populations and I confess that I toyed with the idea of adding a pair of Crab-eyed Gobies (Signigobius ocellatus) but had to admit that they would probably munch their way through the life in the sand faster than it would replenish itself. Oh well, maybe in the next tank? Having decided on a mixture of aragonite and coral sand, I set to work washing sand, mixing things up to achieve a natural-looking substrate with a variety of grain sizes. For the record, fine substrates make for more efficient nitrate removal and mean less depth is required so if this is your priority, go for the finest calcium based sand that you can, with aragonite being the best choice for maintaining pH and calcium levels. This is due to the fact that aragonite dissolves at a higher pH and therefore makes for better buffering potential. These factors are important to bear in mind but not worth losing sleep over, a base of oolitic coral sand with some live aragonite sand added can still do an excellent job – remember we’re on the side of nature here and it always finds a way to work properly
 
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With the substrate in place, it was time to fill the tank with tap water to give that final rinse and check that all was well with the tank. After leaving this water in overnight, it was time to siphon it back out and really get the exciting stuff happening. As my tap water is likely to be a source of high levels of nitrates, phosphates and silicates (like everyone else’s) I collected the two hundred litres of RO water I thought was needed from the Ascot store and added it to the tank. It was also time to add the heater and a thermometer and the tank was set to run at 26C. In order to provide the water movement needed to dissolve the salt, a couple of powerheads were added at this point. Having calculated the approximate volume of the tank, I weighed the salt and added what I hoped was the right amount of Red Sea Coral Pro to the aquarium and watched as the water became a cloud of swirling chemical reactions. Having seen the somewhat erratic readings from both plastic and glass hydrometers, I had decided that a Refractometer would be essential to determine the salinity and avoid stressing myself and my aquatic pets.
 
Twenty-fours hours later, I tested the salt and found that my calculations had been a little out and more salt was added. Another twelve hours later and a little more salt was needed to reach a specific gravity (S.G.) of 1.025 that would be the intended norm for this tank. Having stared into my empty tank for a couple of days, I was ready for the fun to begin – it was time to introduce some life to the system…