Marine reef tank: update!

As you may recall, twenty years or so ago Linda and I were at the forefront of marine reefkeeping here in the UK: little was known about the water parameters necessary to keep corals alive and it was very much trial and error. We eventually graduated to an enormous 6' x 3' x 2' tank, our thinking being that a large volume of water would be less susceptible to rapid changes in pH, temperature, salinity, nitrate level and so on.

We did pretty well with this set up, but the  three protein skimmers, two huge Tunze filtration units, reef surge pumps (that replicated the rise and fall of the tide and changing currents across a natural reef) and a lighting hood packed with UV and fluorescent tubes, generated massive electricity bills! Also, despite all the filters and scrubbers, we still needed to carry out a 10L water change every week or so. You can't use tap water - it contains far too many chemicals that are toxic to all coral species - so this meant regular trips to Attleborough to buy drums of Reverse Osmosis water. To this we added carefully-formulated salts to replicate natural seawater. This all came to an end after I had some pretty serious surgery that meant I couldn't lift anything heavier than a cup of tea for almost a year! We regretfully gave everything away...

A couple of years ago we came across the excellent Taverham Garden Centre aquatics department. We discovered that things have moved on in twenty years, and that it was possible to buy a  30L 'Nanosystem', complete with heaters, lights, protein skimmer and filtration: we thought we'd give it a go! The results (after more trial and error and a few 'tweaks' of our own!) can be seen here! We still have to carry out weekly water changes, but the current regulations allow us to 'buy & collect' the necessary RO water.