My 180G reef aquarium

Hi peeps,

This is my five-month-old tank. It's 72x24x24 and is visible from both the front and back as well as one side. It's located between the living room and Terrace of my apartment so can be seen from pretty much everywhere! I migrated to this tank from a 90G which was set up in November 2007. My corals outgrew that tank so I had to upgrade. Luckily for me, the store that does my maintenance was just upgrading to a new 800 gallon show tank and gave me a deal on this one.

Here's the equipment:

Arctica 1/3 hp chiller
UV filter
Wet dry with built-in protein skimmer
Two Gen-X PCX40 external water pumps
Two LED moonlight strips
Two Orphek 24" Power Reef PR-156W LED Light Fixture (Just installed yesterday and replaced three 175W metal halide bulbs and two strips of compact fluorescent bulbs)

Lighting Issues:

the new LEDs are fixed temporarily to the canopy while I figure out how to get them as high as possible. My issue is that the two units should be enough to light the entire tank at the correct height which is about 12 inches above the water and currently they are about 6 inches above it. I need to go to the hardware store and get some brackets to be able to mount them about 2 inches higher in order to increase the spread but I think I might still be short. If you look at the pictures you can see that currently there is a darker spot in the middle and on the edges of the tank. If I cannot get them to the height required, I'm unsure of what I might do. The first option is to buy a third panel but I still probably won't be happy with the spread for the 24 inch width of the tank. The second option is to get a smaller LED (maybe pendant style) to fill in the middle gap and ends. I would greatly appreciate your input on the situation

Inhabitants:

I'll put a complete list of all the corals, inverts, and fish later on but do note that my main man is the large (16 inch diameter) leather coral on the top left. When I got him about three years ago he was about 5 inches in diameter. If you look at the picture now you might see he looks cut on one side. He is reproducing currently and already dropped off one small clone (which I gifted to a friend) and has three or four more ready to drop soon (which I will sell). the pictures do not know all the corals, inwards, and fish but I'll post more pictures later on.

Love to hear your comments

Cheers,

Simon

Corals and polyps:
umbrella leather
toadstool leather
yellow leather
colt coral
fluorescent tip torch coral
purple tip frogspawn
metallic green hammer branching
green octobubble
green fungia plate
yellow cup coral
sun polyps
fluorescent green star polyps
orange ricordea
green striped mushrooms
blue mushrooms
button polyps
zoanthids
purple tree gorgonian
giant green polyp duncanopsammia
acanthastrea echinata brain
brain coral favites
silver tip pulsing xenia
hairy mushrooms

Invertebrates:
crocea clam
electric flame scallop
hermit crabs
emerald crabs
coral banded shrimp
fire shrimp
cleaner shrimp
sand sifting sea stars
unknown red spiny star
turbo snails

Fish:
orange shoulder tang
blue tang
one spot foxface
firefish
allard's clownfish
cinnamon clownfish
diamond goby
midas blenny
royal gamma basslet
six line wrasse
spotted mandarin
lyretail anthias
unknown species (similar to Talbot's Damselfish)

 

Beautiful tank!
I love the canopy
JJL

 

It beautiful, very nicely maintained and clean looking. The leather looks fantastic.

I like the look of the lighting, it really sets off the leather.

What corals is on the other end?

 

very nice setup!

 

Beautiful tank

looks like time to build a new canopy for the tank to house the LED lighting.

 

more pics

 

more

 

more

 

even more

 

yet more