SRC Tank of the Quarter winner - Mengyang ( June 12 ~ Aug 12 )

Harlequinmania · June 12, 2012

This month, we are featuring our new winner for the Tank of the Quarter !! Mengyang_neo aka Gary has been awarded as the winner. Congratulation to gary for wining , and Kudos to him again for the passion and dedication toward this hobby ! :score:

Title : My Dream Tank

Brief Introduction of your history of setting up your tank

It all started in 2007 when my bro in law decom and pass me his full set of 4x2x2.5ft tank and equipment, as it is a new hobby to me; I paid a lot of fee and earn it the hard way. Starting with a LPS tank, then when I enlisted, I changed it to a FOWLR. It is really very disappointing with so many failures that I decided maybe I should just decom or change a new tank and have a new start.

I change to a 5x1.5x2ft tank, going full zoas with LPS and slowly into full SPS, the journey is fun and I know a lot of reefers and close friend in this fruitful journey. Starting of SPS is plain coincident as I am the lucky winner for Dr Cedric lucky draw and I get to try SPS FOC. From the few frag, I manage to hold the colour and start to get more and more SPS. Advice from Cedric and other SPS keeper are very helpfully and I get to keep SPS more successfully. With SPS getting more and more, manual dosing seems impossible and very troublesome. So I get a dosing pump and keeping the parameter constant becomes a lot easier.

With all the success, I tried to go Full SPS with angels; I stock up too fast and end up crashing my tank, lost a lot of SPS. Lucky I do trade with other reefer so I get to get back some of my SPS. With all the up and down, I decided to once again get a new tank and do all the basic stuff and keeping everything consistence. Finally this year with a clear idea of what my tank is going to be, I change to my present tank – My Dream Tank

Tank details and specification

Main Tank size ; 5x2.4x1.6ft

Sump tank size ; 4x1.8x1.5ft

Types of Glass / thickness ; 12 mm crystal clear glass for 3 side of my main tank

Total Water volume of system ; around 600 litres

Tank system parameter

Calcium - ca ; 400

Alkaline - KH ; 8-8.5

Magnesium – mg ; 1300

Tank system profile ( Equipments list and lighting period )

Skimmer - H&S Skimmer

Return Pump - 2 x Eheim 1264

Wavemaker - 2 x tunze 6095 ,and muilt controller 7096

Chiller - Daikin compressor with coil drop in

Lighting - 2 x 250w MH- 4hrs and 2 x 80w De-lighting Retrofit -9hrs

Reactor - Dosing pump

Addictive used

I do use a dosing pump to dose Ca and Kh and change a pail of water every week. During water change, I will add zeovit Coralsnow and Zeozym, I will add coral vitalizer randomly into my tank when I remember.

List of live stocks in your tank

I am keeping full SPS with zoas and the following list of fishes

Yellow tang
Picasso clown pair
FlameHawk
Mystery Wrasse
Yellow Wrasse
4 Chromis

Some personal Q & A questions

1. Are you a fish guy or a Coral guy ?

Ans ; I am a Coral guy

2. What is your main concern when looking around for your reefing equipment

Ans ; I will go for trusted German brand or brand that has good after sale support. This is very important for reefing as a lot of thing can go wrong.

3. What is your favorite past time

Ans ; Go LFS shopping and chit chat with my group of reefer friends.

4. What is the satisfaction you got from this hobby ?

Ans ; The satisfaction is having small achievement like a brown SPS colour up and to have a slide of ocean in your own living room.

5. Any advice for newbie in this hobby ?

Ans ; I feel reefing is not difficult with all the equipment available to help reefer, and there are a lot people sharing different method of keeping a successful tank. The problem is all the method mentioned take time, and when I said time, it is not 1-2 days; rather it is 2-3 weeks or maybe months. So be patient and you will be rewarded, consistent is the key. All the Best.

Final Acknowledgement and thanks you note

Firstly I will like to thanks my family member for their tolerance and understanding for my passion in this hobby. It really bonded the whole family together as it will be a common topic for the whole family, when thing happen to my tank, sometime they are more nervous than me. Lol

Next will be my reef buddies cum close friends, whom shared sleepless night chiong shipment or early in the morning whatsapping reefing stuff, you know who you are. Cheer!!!!

Last but not least, I want to thank SRC staff and the reefing community for having this platform so that, we reefer can learn and share our experiences.

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