40g Reef Aquarium — Your Site Title

40g Reef Tank

40g breeder, the one that started it all. I convinced my dad that he should buy a custom, ready-to-go reef tank and stand that was running for a year for the office. In some of the first pictures on this page you can see that it came with lights in a canopy, all the plumbing, return pump, rock, skimmer, refugium, auto top off, heater controller, coral and fish. The first month was a big learning curve. The rocks were covered in algae and the corals were in very poor health. I started without sand in the tank, but quickly learned how helpful it would be to keep things stable.

Month 0
Month 1
Month 4
Month 6
Month 7
Month 10
Month 13
Month 19
Month 22
Month 24
Month 27
Month 33
Month 36

Lighting

The light that this setup came with was a 300watt black box and a set of T5 bulbs. Black-box lights are cheap bulky lights with only 2 channels of control usually that have to be set on timers. They grow coral and provide a good spectrum for corals to pop. I ended up swapping out half the diodes to match the ratio that Ecotech lights follow. This provided a better spectrum of color for the corals to really shine. If you want a budget Radion, this is the way to do it. After a year or so I switched this out for two Noopsyche k7ii lights which are an affordable version of AI Hydra 32. I like these lights much better than the black-box because they are smaller, produce more contrast in the tank, the spread was much more even, and corals looked better. The T5 bulbs provided extra spread tpo fill in some of the shadows and darker parts of the coral. I used a blue plus and actinic bulb.
I had the lights on for 12 hours a day with 2 hour ramp up and down with 6 hours of very white light in the middle. The par I was getting at the peak of the day was around 250 to 300 in the high spots on rock. In the substrate I was shooting for 100par as much as I could. I increased the lighting percentage/strength over several months cause if I would have done this when I first got the light, I would have fried the corals.

Filtration, Testing, and dosing

This reef tank came with a DIY 20g sump that had a few sections for a skimmer, refugium, return and filter sock. I took it out after a couple months because it was working to well and would keep stripping the water clean of nutrients. I believe skimmers shouldn’t be used on aquariums under 100 gallons unless the bio-load is very heavy. I removed the baffle for the skimmer section out of the sump to have a larger refugium area. I tried to grow chaetomorpha in there, but green hair algae overtook the area. This didn’t bother because it’s still algae that’s removing excess nutrients from the water column and is growing in the sump and not the display. Eventually, I turned it into a soft coral refugium with anthelia and xenia corals growing on everything. While this wasn’t as effective at removing nutrients rapidly from the water column, it was much more pleasing to the eye. I also moved more than 50 anemones from a grow out tank to the refugium along with the worlds happiest clownfish (picture above). I used a filter cup with filter floss instead of a filter sock. I did my best to change it every 3-4 days. Occasionally, I would add Rowaphos to lower phosphates and a bag of carbon to clean the water.
I tested every single Saturday for salt, temperature, nitrate, phosphate, and alkalinity. Once a month I would test for calcium, magnesium, iron, iodine, and potassium. I tested for those minor elements because I was only doing a 20% water change once a month so those weren’t being replenished. Iron became especially important in my aquarium to help keep the dinoflagellates away. I liked to get icp tests every couple of months to make sure everything was on track or to find any issues with the aquariums water or RODI water.
I used a few Two Little Fishies products like iron as well as their two part solution for alkalinity, calcium and magnesium and their amino acid supplement Acropower. I tried to mess around with some of the KZ products, but it was a lot of daily work and I didn’t see any results. For bacteria additives, I really liked Reefbrite Live Rock Enhance and Reef Enhance. The product enhances pod population, coral color and growth, and nutrient uptake. Because this was my first tank, I tested a large variety of products. I’ve tried a few different brands for carbon dosing and I liked Tropic Marin’s the best because they have a few different kinds depending on your nutrient levels and where you want them to be. To replenish trace elements, I dosed Brightwell Replenish weekly.

Fish, Coral, and Feeding

The long-term fish were consistent of two clownfish, six-line wrasse, algae blenny, and a purple tang. Some short-term residence were a yellow tang, glass cardinal, yellow coris wrasse, fire fish, mandarin goby and royal gramma. The clownfish were always breeding and stayed in a flower pot that had a toadstool in front and anemone attached to the inside of the pot. I did raise a clutch of their babies and still have a pair today.
The aquarium was a very mixed reef that had over 100 different coral species. This was very challenging to keep up with and resulted in dozens of dead stung coral. It’s very hard to accommodate all the corasl requirements for flow, light and food since they come from different parts of the water column and different oceans altogether. My favorites in the tank were the acropora because of how colorful they were and how well they photographed with macro lens, especially the Walt Disney acropora tenuis.
In the first two years I would feed twice a day frozen spirulina brine shrimp and I had no issues with it besides thawing out the cubes, so I became a flake food fan. I tried every single brand out there, but my favorites were PE Mysis and CS Pro flakes. Once a week I would try to feed the corals a slurry of all the coral foods out there plus amino acids. Reef chili and ROE soaked in amino’s was my favorite combo. I did notice when I stopped feeding for a while the corals were not as healthy.