January 2017 Tank Of The Month (slief)

[Misled]

My name is Scott Leif. It’s a great honor to have my tank featured as tank of the month. It’s nothing I ever expected and I am truly flattered. I got started in the salt water hobby around 1988 when I purchased my first salt water tank which was about 75 gallons as I recall. I had mostly predators in that tank such as triggers and lionfish. After moving to a new house around 1990, I was given a 90 gallon tall tank which I again setup as a predator tank. Shortly after that I bought a 100 gallon tank and had acquired a very large moray eel which I named Gorby after the Russian President due to a birth mark on the eel’s head. I realized that the tank was too small for this eel and ordered an acrylic 240 gallon tank which really opened a can of worms for me. I quickly found my fascination with sharks. What started out as catching leopard sharks off the local piers and beaches and bringing them home wound up with me importing fish and exotic sharks such as white tip reef sharks, black tips, lemon sharks, etc. I ended up putting kiddy pools in my garage to house them while I found them new homes. At one point I was selling sharks and fish to hotels such as the Mirage in Las Vegas as well as other stores that dealt in exotic sharks. It wasn’t long that even the 240 seemed small so I decided to order a 480 gallon acrylic display for Gorby and the sharks. One day while sitting in my living room watching TV, I heard and felt a huge bang. My first thought was that somebody had run their car into the front of the house. I ran outside but there was nothing there. When I came back in the house, I noticed the water in the tank was sloshing around and the water was stained blood red. Gorby decided to take out a leopard shark that I had in the tank. With one quick snap, he split the shark in half and the attack displaced enough water that it shook the entire house. I was actually pretty shocked. He was very well fed and extremely tame as I handled him all the time. Goby would allow me to rub his chin and loved having his sides scratched and rubbed. He would even let me pick him up out of the tank. Despite being over five feet long and being extremely heavy, he was a gentle giant but the leopard shark wasn’t so lucky. Due to the fact that I had white tip reef sharks in my tank, it had become clear that it was time to find Gorby a new home which I did. It was a decision that I have regretted to this day. I know he never got the attention that I gave him ever again.



I continued selling sharks for another year or so until I got tired of the feeding regimen and became interested in reefs. By this time it was around 1995 or 1996. I opted to sell the remaining sharks and convert the tank over to a reef. Initially, my success wasn’t good. I remember the tank being inundated with all kinds of algae. It got to the point where I lost interest in the tank for a number of months and just ignored it. It was then when I cleaned the glass after months of neglect that the algae issue burnt itself out. This reignited my interest in the reef tank.
Fast forward to 1997 when I moved into my new home that was purchased with three criteria in mind. First and foremost was an ideal space for my 480 gallon tank. The tank is 4’ wide x 8’ long x 2’ tall. As such, finding a home that would provide a good space for such a monstrosity would be a challenge. I had this tank for a few years prior and it was setup as a mixed reef system at my rental house. Other factors that contributed to my home purchase were space for my entertainment system and a good size three car “man cave” garage. After months of looking I found my home.

This was my first home purchase and as such, it was quite an experience. As part of the system move, the tank would be picked up by the company that originally built it. It needed some scratches removed and they were local and willing to turn it around in 24 hours. Escrow closed on a Friday around noon. Within minutes of escrow closing we were in the new house hacking the walls away. The plan was to convert a room that was next to my den into an office and utilize the tank as part of the divider wall. It would be built-in the wall and you can walk around the other three sides. To do this, the wall needed to be hacked, doors removed, bathroom door moved etc. Two days later (Sunday, the tank was torn down at the old house. Livestock, water and the live rock was moved to the new house via a U-Haul truck and I set up kiddy pools in the garage to house everything. Monday the tank manufacturer came to the old house, picked up the tank and polished it out. They delivered the tank on Tuesday and I managed to get the tank plumbed and setup with all my rock and livestock that night. There are lots of additional details including pictures of the initial install in my build thread.
About two year later I decided it was time to redo my aquascape as I had more creative ideas in mind. This included using pond foam to glue all the live rock together and make a more natural looking aquascape. Again, everything was moved to kiddy pools in the garage for the 24 hour project. I had my buddy Conde come over to polish out scratches and then I spent the next day building the aquascape using new and existing live rock and pond foam to glue the rocks together into a more natural looking aquascape. That was about 17 years ago and the same aquascape remains in place today. The tank has gone through many changes over the years including lots of equipment upgrades that I did to improve the quality of my system as well as its efficiency but never drained. Back in 2009, my electric bill was nearly $1100 a month. I opted to do a major equipment upgrade including new sumps, pumps, LEDs to replace the metal halides as well as other changes resulting in my electric bill dropping to $350 a month while I also increased my flow substantially. While the upgrade was insanely expensive, the reduction in my power bill paid for the upgrade the first year and has saved me tens of thousands since. This was also the point that my tank really took off. The entire upgrade was detailed in my build thread and also covered in some LA Fish Guys episodes.





Today my tank is a very mature mixed reef. It’s been up and running for what amounts to 19 years with the exception of a two-day tear down for the re-aquascape around 17 year ago. I’ve always loved having lots of fish and the movement from soft corals. For the most part my tank was dominated by soft corals and some LPS. A little over a year ago, I was offered some SPS frags and begrudgingly took them. I say begrudgingly because I never had much success with SPS corals in the past and don’t like taking things that I don’t have much confidence in keeping alive. Much to my surprise they took off and grew like weeds which really opened another can of worms. I’m sure you all know how that goes. Since then, every SPS frag or coral I put in my tank thrives which is a blessing and a curse since it gets costly and I’ve run out of room in my tank or should I say tanks. Over the last several months, I’ve started removing soft corals and LPS to make way for other coral as well as those that are growing. For me it’s been a constant learning experience. You place a frag with good intentions and next thing you know, it’s growing like a weed and infringing on other corals and or taking up prime real estate. This is especially problematic when the tank already has corals growing everywhere. In fact, I haven’t added a soft coral or LPS in many years but the softies and some other corals are literally trying to grow out of the water. I also had to frag out a hammer colony that grew in 2-3 years from a pinky nail sized frag into a colony that was well over 2’ across and over 200 heads. Fortunately I recently added a frag tank to my system to handle the overflow of corals and provide me a place to keep new arrivals and frags from the main display.



Tank
Presently the system consists of the main 480 gallon display which is setup as a 4’x8’x2’ tall peninsula, a 90 gallon custom sump, 90 gallon custom Refugium with 4” deep sand/mud bed and chaeto, a 60 gallon display Refugium that has some soft corals, a couple mangroves, and a ton of algae. Then there is a 40 gallon frag tank all of which are plumbed together. The display Refugium and frag tank are fed from a manifold on my return pump and both drain back to the return section in my Refugium below the display tank. My total system volume I estimate to be around 700 gallons.

[Misled]

Maintenance
I am not a maintenance kind of person. I’ve managed to automate most of the things that require typical work on a tank and have also setup my system to reduce maintenance. My water changes are automated and change out five gallons a day. My controller handles my top offs and the tank is mostly bare bottom with a lot of flow. I have my Tunze power heads and closed loop pump set to kick up to high flow several times a day to stir up any detritus that may have settled. This eliminates the need for vacuuming the main system. Since I run a well-tuned calcium reactor, I don’t need to dose anything though I do add some iodine every week to ten days. Other than cleaning the viewing panes, I test my Ca, Alk and phosphates once or twice a month. The system is always stable which makes testing less frequent for me. My alk is typically around 8.5, Ca between 430- 450. Between my protein skimmer, the several hundred pounds of live rock in the system, the deep sand/mud bed in the main refugium and the display refugium, nitrates are never an issue and never really detectable. The only thing that needs somewhat regular attention is Po4. Due to my large fish population and heavy feedings, Po4 is something that needs somewhat regular attention despite my use of GFO. Every 4-6 months I treat with Lanthanum Chloride which I dose over the course of several hours using an IV bag directly into 10 micron filter sock. While I never have algae issues in the main display, my display Refugium is always a good telltale sign of my Po4 levels and as such serves as my indicator as to when it’s time to dose. I allow the Po4 levels to get as high a .12 and will drop them down to .04 over the course of a few days using LaCl. I have four 7” 200 microns felt filter socks in my sump which get changed out once a week. I refill my automatic thawed frozen food feeder every few days. Other than that, the only other maintenance I really have to do is to refill my mixing container on a weekly basis. I estimate that I spend around and hour or two a month doing tank maintenance.



Filtration:
90 Gallon Custom Sump with four 7” Filter socks
90 Gallon Custom Refugium
60 Gallon Display Refugium
AquaUV Classic 114 watt UV Sterilzer
Bubble King Supermarin 250 protein skimmer with AquaDriver Skimclean Helix Self Cleaning Head

Flow:
Royal Exclusiv RD3 230 Return Pump
Royal Exclusiv RD3 230 Closed Loop Pump (controlled via my Apex)
Two Tunze 6205 power heads and one Tunze 6105 power heads in the main display controlled via my Apex
There are two Tunze 6095’s in my display refugium as well as a Tunze 6055 in the frag tank which are controlled by my Profilux 3.

Other Equipment:
BRS Jumbo Carbon Reactor
BRS Jumbo GFO reactor
Geo 818 Calcium reactor with Reborn Media
Geo 414 secondary reactor with ARM media that is downstream of the Geo 818
Cole Parmer Masterflex 7523-80 Digital Peristaltic Pump for the calcium reactor feed pump.
Aquarium Plants Carbon Doser regulator
Stenner peristaltic pump for my ATO Pump
Genesis Renew Pro automatic water change system.



Lighting
For lighting on the main display I presently have 10 Kessil 360WE’s mounted on a custom aluminum light rack that uses a winch and pulley system so I can raise and lower it with the push of a button. On my frag tank I have a GHL Mitras LX7206. When I compare the same corals under the two different lights, the color difference in the corals is really shocking. The Mitras bring out colors in corals that you don’t see under the Kessil 360WE’s. Because of the difference in coral coloration I will be switching my main display over to the GHL Mitras LX7206s in the very near future. I love the Kessils as do my corals but as I said, the colors of the same corals under the Mitras sold me. I have a Maxspect Razor R420 16,000k over the display Refugium and a combination of 10 watt and 20 watt 6500K LED Flood Lights on the main refugium under my display.



Electronics:
I run a very large Apex system with five EB8s, four EB4s, three LSM Module, DOS (for a thawed frozen food feeder), AFS, three Lunar Sims, three VDM Modules, PM1, PM2, Display Module, custom break out box, two ALDs with five leak sensors at various locations around the tank and in the life support shed. I may be forgetting something but those are the main components. I monitor pH, ORP, Salinity & temp.
I also have a GHL Profilux 3 Ultimate set which I also really love. That serves as a secondary monitor for my main system and also controls the frag tank and display Refugium. It also controls the Mitras LX7 over the frag tank and a Mirtas LX6200 as well as a GHL Doser 2 on a new tank which will ultimately be a SPS dominant reef. I monitor pH, ORP, Salinity and temp with the Profilux as well.
For water quality I have a 100 gallon RODI tank and a 100 gallon mixing tank in a shed located outside our home which shares the adjacent wall behind the main display. The ATO draws from the RODI tank, the Renew AWC draws from the mixing tank, and the lines are routed from the shed through the wall, into the house, and into the sump.
Since I am in SoCal where we have been suffering from a drought for many years, I chose a Spectrapure 90 GPD UHE unit that produces one gallon of RODI for every gallon of waste water.

[Misled]

Livestock:
I mentioned that I like having lots of fish and at this point I have over 60 fish in the system ranging from some larger tangs to smaller Anthias. I also have several coral bandit shrimp, cleaner shrimp, a harlequin shrimp, snails, hermit crabs, starfish and other invertebrates.
Current Fish:
Vlamingi Tang (Large)
Unicorn Tang (Large)
Tomini Tang
Achilles Tang
(2) Yellow Tangs
Orange Shoulder Tang
(2) Kole Tangs
(3) Oscillaris Clown Fish
Melanurus Wrasse
Six Line Wrasse
Various other wrasses
Borbonius Anthias
(10) Lyertail Anthias
(2) Squareback Anthias
Mandarin Goby
(4) Engineer Gobys
Lawnmower Blenny
(7) Pajama Cardinals
(5) Bangaai Cardinals
Pyramid Butterfly
Matted Filefish
Fox Face
(2) misc. Rabbit Fish
(2 Yellowtail Damsels
(2) Royal Gramma
(2) Gold Flake Angels
Flame Angel
Lemon Peel Angel
Bellus Angel
(I’m probably missing a few)

[Misled]

[Misled]

Corals:
I have a pretty wide range of corals between the main display and the frag tank connected to it. Frankly, I’m terrible with names so listing them all is pretty tough but I can name several beside the soft corals. There are Garf Bonsai’s, Tri-Color acropora, strawberry shortcake acropora, red dragon acropora, other acropora, various birdsnests including but not limited to pink birdsnest, green birdsnest, monti caps, red setosa, bubble gum montipora, other montipora, purple sylophora, pink stylophora, millepora, pocillopora, porites, spongodes, bleeding apply scolymia, and many others.

[Misled]

In closing, I’d like to reiterate that you never stop learning in this hobby and I have learned so much from our fellow forum members. I have spent countless hours over the years reading threads here and I am always learning from others. If I have a questions or concerns of my own, I find myself searching this forum looking for my answers. Having said that, one of the most important things I have learned over the years is patience. Nothing good comes fast when it comes to salt water tanks. Especially reef tanks. It takes several months or more for a tank to mature and it can take years for the tank to be fully established. From time to time I setup tanks for others and have other tanks myself. I’ve learned not to rush things and instead allow my tanks many months before I start really stocking them with corals and or expensive fish. Unfortunately our excitement with a new tank can often lead us to rush things and the end result is usually a higher rate of casualties which is something that can be easily avoided with some patience. For those of you who are new to the hobby, the single most important piece of advice I can give you is to take it slow. The old saying “patience is a virtue” goes a long way if you truly want to be successful in this hobby! That and read read read… Then read some more!
Thank you for nominating me for tank of the month and I hope you enjoyed reading some of the history of my tanks.

[bobbravo2]

Any pics of your display refugium? Great setup!

[jason2459]

WoooooHoooooo! ToTM is back!!!!!!

Slief, congratulations and well deserved. Always value your input and contributions to this forum. Thank you and happy new year!

[Maritimer]

Congratulations ... that's a beautiful tank, and a fun history to read!

~Bruce

[slief]

Wow.. I have to say that when it was mentioned that I was being considered for Tank Of The Month, I was positively floored. While my tank pales in comparison to many tanks here and especially to former TOTM's, I am truly honored.

As mentioned above in the initial post, I have had this tank for many many years. I find myself walking around it daily and while I always marvel at it, it's easy to take for granted. It's not often that I have fellow hobbyist over to share it with and those who aren't in the hobby see a tank like this more like a picture and just don't appreciate what goes into having a display like this. I can't begin to say how honored I am to have my system featured like this. Truly, words cannot convey how much I truly appreciate it and how flattered I am. Thank you Reef Central and thank you to all of my fellow members as well. I've learned so much from you over the years and without a doubt, this forum has played a crucial role not only in my tanks success but also in helping me maintain my perseverance over the years.

Thanks again RC and all of you members and a very happy new year to all! I Also owe a special thank you to Misled (Jesse) whom I flooded with pictures via email. This prompted me to take a crash course in cameras and also resulted in me getting a new camera for XMAS. Apparently the iPhone pictures weren't cutting it. I pity not only your email inbox but also the amount of time you had to spend sifting through all those photos to find the good ones. I still have a lot to learn about taking good photos but this without a doubt has catapulted my interest photography. I learned a lot thus far but also learned just how much I still have to learn. Jesse, I might be calling on you in the future for more tips!

Also, thanks to D2Mini (Dennis) who also answered countless PM's and questions and provided lots of tips on cameras and settings as well!

Originally Posted by bobbravo2

Any pics of your display refugium? Great setup!

Thank you very much. The display refugium can be seen in the 2nd pictures of the first post. It's the one in the center of the photos with the mangroves in it. It's nothing special. It has live rock, some soft corals, the mangroves and a bunch of algae..

Originally Posted by jason2459

WoooooHoooooo! ToTM is back!!!!!!

Slief, congratulations and well deserved. Always value your input and contributions to this forum. Thank you and happy new year!

Thanks Jason! Very much appreciated and a very happy new year to you too!

[davocean]

Wow, impressive system, and thanks for all your input here, congrats!

[wilder]

Wonderful! Congrats! A tank that has inspired and fascinated me since its beginning.

[chris_kitedude]

a truly deserved tank of the month! congrats to you scott and the love and many hours of work you put into a really stunning display. well deserved. -CK


Gesendet von iPhone mit Tapatalk

[ReefPharmer]

Congrats Scott. Amazing tank and I'm so glad I had the opportunity to see it up close and personal.

[Maximus]

Wow, automation at its finest! I can't wait to decide on a BK skimmer and the Aquadriver self cleaning head. Congrats, Scott!!

[wrott]

I love your fish and corals, and always appreciate the good advice that you give to us!
Beautiful tank, keep up the good work.
rod

[deleau]

Scott,

That's the best use of a hall tree that I have ever seen!

Congrats on TotM!

Thank you again for everything you do on this board, especially your willingness to assist myself and countless others with Royal Exclusiv and the "Masterflex" thread.

-Shane

[ca1ore]

Fine looking tank there Scott. Bet it looks even more impressive in person.

Had it in my head that your main display was mainly softies and LPS; yet, some mighty fine looking SPS. Is that in the frag tank? Under the Kessils?

Always appreciate the old-timer photos ..... well. maybe long-timer

[slief]

Thanks guys for the kind words!

Originally Posted by ca1ore

Fine looking tank there Scott. Bet it looks even more impressive in person.

Had it in my head that your main display was mainly softies and LPS; yet, some mighty fine looking SPS. Is that in the frag tank? Under the Kessils?

Always appreciate the old-timer photos ..... well. maybe long-timer

Thanks Simon. There is a lot of soft coral in the tank as you can see from the pictures but the SPS that I've added over the last year and a half or so pretty much took off. Everything I put in there seems to flourish. All except for one of those corals in the pictures above are in the main display under the Kessils though I do have several GHL Mitras LX7206's arriving late this week so that is soon to change. The only coral in the above pictures that is in the frag tank is the green one with the blue polyps. I really want to move that to the main display but I am not sure where to put it that it will be seen. The main display is completely inundated with corals leaving little room for new additions that aren't branching corals. The only prime space available is on the office/fish room side of the tank near my big BTA and I don't want anything in that area for fear of the BTA stinging it. My plan is to remove some of the larger hairy mushroom rocks on the bottom of the office side of the tank and add a couple live rock pinnacles. Then I will have more prime space for SPS and I'd have a good place to move that green one to. I also have a 100 gallon tank that I setup a couple months ago and have been letting it go through it's paces. It's not connected to this system unfortunately. It's just finished it's initial algae cycles & there will be plenty of room in that tank for lots of SPS. I will start slowly in that tank until I feel it's ready. No point in rushing things though I do have a lot of frags in the frag tank ready to go someplace and there are plenty of SPS in the main display to steal frags from too.

[slief]

Originally Posted by deleau

Scott,

That's the best use of a hall tree that I have ever seen!

Congrats on TotM!

Thank you again for everything you do on this board, especially your willingness to assist myself and countless others with Royal Exclusiv and the "Masterflex" thread.

-Shane

You like that sock tree huh?? I thought it was a great idea too!

Thanks Shane!

[slief]

Here are some more pictures.

[slief]

[slief]

[slief]

And a couple below tank shots.




Frag tank.


And the life support shed.

[DgenR8]

Absolutely beautiful! Thank you for sharing your tank with us