Reef Hunters - November 2007

DragonReef

DragonReef

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Hey Hey it's Reef Hunters time again!

You guy's know the drill by now..... It starts with an excited phone call that goes like this...
" There is this tank that's a gem.. " Normally at this stage I don't even hear the rest of the conversation, I just want to get out and see it.

Boy what a month this has been for things in general. The Sharks and Bulls players over in France winning the world cup for us... The guy's that are left behind winning the Cheetahs their third successive Currie Cup trophy.. LOL, I'll duck for cover now.

Ok so where am I going with all of this. Well it's all about the package.. Settle, girls, settle.
What I mean is, you take the Boks or the Cheetahs or any winning combination for that matter and it's all about the whole package.
Sure there are some brilliant individual aspects, but it's all about the whole 9 yards, The Full Monty, The Whole Enchilada, basically the whole package.
No, No I'm not still suffering the aftermath of celebrating all the glory of late, I'm making a point here...
This months Reef Hunters tank is all about the whole package.

From the moment we walked through the door and saw this tank, I was dumbstruck at the sight I saw before me. Everything about what I saw was... well it was awesome. The setting, the layout, the perfect proportions of the room, the cabinetry, and of course the tank itself. It presented itself in all its glory and without trying to sound melodramatic, it literally took my breath away.
Ok so what have we got. The system belongs to Graham Leitch and has been running for about 12 months now. The system is an upgrade from his previous system in a sense because he moved houses and decided to go BIG. And big it is.. 3.2m x 1.1m wide x .8m tall.

The tank acts as a room divider, seperating the main lounge from a secondary TV lounge / entertainment area.
The tank is constructed from 12mm Glass and was custom built to fit the space. The cabinet was also custom built to match the furniture in the rest of the house.

Due to Grahams hectic work and travel schedule he can't spend as much time maintaining this system as he would like to. He takes care of the day to day stuff while Ropesh from Northlands Pets is entrusted to do the major maintenance work.

Here she is..

RHGL008.jpg


And here are a few pictures of some of the livestock.

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Gorgeous Clam

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Lumo Green Elegance - Happy as Larry on the rocks..

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The beauty for me of having a room divider system like this is that you almost get 2 reefs for the price of one :)

The views from either side, although not completely different do have different aspects and corals that are hidden away. This tank is wide, much wider than it looks in the pictures. 1.1m I'm told, but I have a feeling it's wider and we need to actually measure it. This opens up so many options as far as Aquascaping is concerened.
Graham isn't happy with the current aquascape, but I think it works.
This is the view from the other side.

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Some of the livestock hidden on the other side

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Ok, so what about the nut's and bolts...

Lets start with skimming and in this department we have 2 x Aquamedic T5000 shorty's in a dedicated sump compartment.
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I think Vinnie, from Orange County Choppers designed the exhausts...

There is no DSB, but the system is run on a denitrator. Parameters are kept in check with a Calcium reactor and all top up water is added via a Kalk stirrer.

Note the huge RO top up tank in this pic

RHGL023.jpg


The overflow is situated on the end of the tank, and if it's my only criticism of the system I would say that the overflow is too small and remote to effectively cope with nutrient export. Then again for the type of system which is dominated by LPS and Soft coral I would say it's working just fine.

This will give you a better indication of the width of the tank:

RHGL028.jpg


Lighting is provided by 2 x Aquamedic pendants, each housing 2 x 250 watt MH's and T5's. The pendants are suspended above the tank by 2 glass partitions that are siliconed on the top of the tank. The one draw back of these pendants is that the T5's are too far from the water to add any benefit and are more for aestecics.

RHGL029.jpg
 
Overall though this is one truly spectacular tank, which as I have mentioned is put together so well from every aspect that it would be hard to try and improve on it.
Livestock is in prime condition, which can be attributed to excellent husbandry and the nice open aquascape.

Here are a few more pics.

I love this Finger leather coral which has dominated the centre pinacle of the aquascape. At the time of us taking the pics the light cycle had just started, so everything was still coming out of hibernation.

RHGL032.jpg


Awesome Gorgonian on the bottom left.

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One more

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Almost perfect " True Reef " representation.

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is this graham from leich landscapes ???? what an awesome tank !!!!
 
Graham first off, thank you for allowing us acess to your home even though you were away at the time. When i originally spoke to you on the phone you were concerned that the system may not be worthy of a feature like this, let me assure you my friend this is one awsum system, i was totally blown away by it. It almost looks like the house was designed around the aquarium.
 
Lovely tank, I like the fact that there is a lot of space in the tank.
 
Wow, it's not often that you get softie setups that are this spectacular!
 
WOW! Looking REALLY good! And I agree. For a softie and LPS dominated tank even! Goes to show - that it's not IMPERATIVE and a MUST HAVE to have a very nice looking tank, even with only softies and LPS....

Good show Graham!

Thanks Anthony/Alan for finding this for us!
 
Cracking system:thumbup: :thumbup: :slayer: , lots of open space for fish to swim. I have not done the math, but that must be a fair wack of water. Do you know what sort of water changes take place and how he manages them?
Thanks,
neil
 
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