Mrs. Binford's Beautiful Reef

Mrs. Binford's Beautiful Reef

 

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:

toadstool leather finger leather cabbage coral dunan kenya tree lobophyllia acans favias palyothas zoanthids blastomussa

tomato clown pair purple tang two pajama cardinals yellow tail damsel black hooded basslet six line wrasse yellow coral wrasse harlequin shrimp three cleaner shrimp snowflake eel (in fuge)

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

[jimsflies]

Thanks Kathy for sharing your fantastic reef! Well done!

[larryandlaura]

Thanks for sharing your amazing reef!

[Manoj's Reef]

Very beautiful mixed reef...love the clown eggs, nice coral collection and awesome equipment. Thanks for sharing.

[youngtimothy]

Congrats! Very Nice!!!!!

[dentdominator]

That's a great looking tank. I like the way it all filled in and flows. Looks like a lot of time was put into this system. Great job !!

Congrats and Happy Holidays !!

[mikezalewski]

Congrats! Ms. Binford. Tank looks great as always.


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[dlhirst]

Congratulations, and thanks for the inspiration for us little folks!

[mrs binford]

I want to say thanks again for chooseing my tank to be the tank of the mouth. I want to thank Mr. Binford for getting me in the hobby and building my system for me. I would like to thank Manoj for coming over and take the picture for me he did a great job. As you can see i really like the softy the are so relaxing to watch when you have a stressful day.

[binford4000]

good job babe,and thanks Manoj for the great pic's you really did make her tank look great