Pictures of my Reef

Taken in May 1996.

Pictures of my homemade downdraft skimmer.

Pictures of my tanks taken in March 1997.

My reef tank is a 40 gallon glass aquarium with 55 pounds of live sand from Tropico Reeflife, 44 pounds of CaribSea Reef Sand (dead sand), and 55 pounds of "premium" live rock from Tropico Reeflife. Above the main aquarium is a 20 gallon refugium tank with 55 pounds of Tropico Reeflife's coralline grade live rock. This rock used to be in the main aquarium before I got the premium rock.

The light fixture over my main reef is a real shabby piece of work. Read about it here.
To see the coralline grade rock alone, soon after I received it, click here.
To see the premium rock in the main reef, click here.
To see the refugium, click here.
To see how I handle fresh water topoff to make up for evaporation, click here.
Here's a picture of my 2.5 gallon "prison" tank, where I store crabs, urchins, and my carnivorous "mystery" snails. I had a small mantis shrimp in it for a while, but one of the crabs killed it. (I saw the crab playing with the tail of the mantis shrimp.) The tank holds just enough live sand to cover the bottom, and one live rock. The rock is mostly bare at the moment because for months the tank had no light. Water circulation is via an airlift pump that moves water from one end of the tank to the other. There is a heater, but no other hardware.
Cool red bubble algae in the main tank.

I'm new at photographing aquaria, and most of these photos could be much better. A pervasive problem is one of contrast. The tops of the rocks are overexposed and the more shaded regions are underexposed. That means that there is a lot of detail in the rock that you can't see in the pictures. The overexposed regions are particularly unfortunate, since they appear white, like bare rock, and the bareness of live rock is one of the measures of its quality (or lack thereof). Until I figure out how to take better pictures, I can only say that the rock is less bare than it appears.

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