This tank has been up since 1999, when I transferred my 55 gallon that I'd started in 1995 into it. The display tank is a 155 bow front, plumbed to a serious series of filters in my basement. Basement "filtration" starts with a 30 gallon tub of homemade trickle media and then drains into two 55 gallon tanks where my refugium/deep sand bed further filters the water, while the second tank can be "shut off" from the system to serve as a quarantine tank or for water changes. Water top off is handled by an aquacontroller which "decides" to add FW with or without KW depending on evaporation, pH, and conductivity. Two iwaki-55-rlt's return the water to the display tank and power a downdraft skimmer.
Tank lighting is provided by 2- 250w 6500k MHs and 3x 90-watt VHO actinics, in a homemade hood.
The tank houses several gorgonians, anemones, and mix of hard LPS and soft corals. From one green blade and purple blade gorgonians each, I cut and have grown 7 gorgonian, and have let 2 types of encrusting gorgonians encrust some branching coral skeletons. I have several species of brain and disk corals, plus elegant, hammer and torch corals. A colt coral frag has now grown into 4 separate colonies, and there are yellow polyps and various sand polyps, including a pacific ricordia colony, throughout the tank. My pulsing xenia colonies are growing out of control, and until this summer, I had a thin-bar xenia that also did fabulous for 2 years when this summer it mysteriously stopped expanding and eventually perished, with nothing else in the tank effected. However, for me, the showpiece is really a Condylactis gigantica, which has grown from a couple of inches to a monster with 8" arms when fully expanded and is the home of my anemonefish, although she's also taken to the sand anemones which live around the base of the Condylactis.
Fish include: royal gramma loreto, cherub angelfish, Brazilian flameback angel, lemonpeel angel, sailfin tang, Atlantic blue tang, purple tang, mimic tang, 4 dartfish and 4 bar gobies and 4 green chromis (who all school fabulously together), blue damselfish, a 3-yellow bar anemonefish, a blue assessor, a black blenny, bicolor blenny, and a canary blenny.
Inverts: 3 cleaner shrimp, a blue coral banded shrimp, a dozen or so left-handed hermits, a couple of pistol shrimp, at least 2 porcelain crabs, mixed snails, mixed sand cukes and brittle/serpent stars. One 6-legged fromia seastar, a smallish blue linkia, at least 4 mystery sand-brown sea stars, and assorted feather dusters of various sizes.
