Mrs. Binford's Beautiful Reef

[mrs binford]

I am very surprised and happy to be Tank of the Month. I read captive reefs a lot but don't respond or post much, I really enjoy the mix of reefers and see several other female members doing a great job.

I started this hobby by way of a gift from my husband ( @binford4000 ) when we first met in 1991. My first tank was 125-gallon tall which I maintained for about 12 years, When we moved to southeast Michigan due to the economy, I downgraded to a 36-gallon bow front. Which it was a nice change. I maintained that for about three years tell it was destroyed in a move and lucky the husband got a 75-gallon for Christmas which now is my present tank.

Equipment

The tank is lit by all LED's, It has two Aqua Illumination SOL blue modules and we just added a Aqua Illumination Nano SOL blue to fill in the shadow of the brace.

The tank is an All Glass Aquarium 75-gallon drilled with a single overflow box built my husband, with a 1-inch drain. It has a 50-gallon refugium/sump which has a large emphasis on growing sponges which is why there is no light on it. The return is a reef octopus hyd 5000 reef flow pump, which runs a complete header for all extra components and also is the return to the tank. It runs to a single 3/4-inch flow inductor which creates a huge amount of flow.

In the tank I have two Tunze Nanostream 6025 and a Korilla 4 for added flow. An Aqua Euro USA 1/10 HP chiller, a 37-watts UV sterilizer and a BRS dual chamber GFO and Carbon reactor are connected to the return header. My skimmer is a Skimz SM180 cone skimmer. I use a 500-watt heater. Everything except the LED's is controlled via a Neptune Aqua Controller Jr. I use the Aqua Illumination controller for the LED's which I love!!! My husband has been obsessed with reducing the electric bill so my tank went thru a complete upgrade this year.

Maintenance

I use a Profilux doser to do a continuous water change and top off. I use only Brightwell's salt and maintain the following parameters:

Salinity: 1.025
Alkalinity: is 10 ppm
Calcium: 430 to 475 pm
Nitrite: 0 ppm
Nitrate: 15 to 50 ppm
Magnesium: ~1350 ppm

I dose strontium and magnesium on a weekly basis. I feed the corals Reef Nutrition Oyster-Feast and Phyto-Feast. Fish are fed frozen mysis shrimp, Rods food, and spirulina.

Inhabitants

I don't know the collector "names" of most of my coral. I don't keep up with all of them...I just buy them because I like them. My livestock collection includes:

Thanks to @Manoj's Reef for taking the photos for this month's TOTM.

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