Alright Everyone. I think I'm going to start the trend of posting our tanks life stories on here. There are some extremely beautiful "teaser" shots out there of some of your tanks and I really want to see them now. Anywho, here is my story. Last year I started what is currently my present reef tank in the closet of my college dorm room. It was a 10 gallon tank then and housed some Yellow polyps, some zoos, a hefty clean up crew and a six line wrasse. Now, about a year later, I find myself out of the dorms (thank goodness), and in my new house here in waukesha (the city most of my classes are in). I live in the basement and have built a custom "L" shaped desk with my new 20L in the center. Here is my setup....


Tank: 20L AGA

Lighting: 2x65 watt Coralife Aqualight Deluxe PC
2x14 watt Coralife T5
(158 watts total)

Filtration: 10 gallon sump filter with QuietOne 1200 return pump.

Water Movement: 2 Spray bars at opposing ends of the tank connected to return pump with an SCWD wavemaker.

Heater: AGA 200 watt heater

Water perameters:

NH3: 0 ppm
NO2: 0 ppm
NO3: 0 ppm (i had expected this to be a little higher)
pH: 8.2 -8.4
temp: 78.5- 80.0

Livestock:

22 lbs. of live rock
20 lbs. of live sand
1 mangrove plant (in fuge)
Caularpa (in fuge)
10 lbs. of live sand (in fuge)
Fiji Mud (in fuge)

1 Maroon Clown
1 Six Line Wrasse
1 Bi color Blenny

1 5 headed frogspawn (was only 2 headed when I bought it!)
small colony of Yellow polyps
Large colony of Green Star Polyps
Small cutting of Xenia
Large colony of green and purple zoos
small colony of green zoos that I fragged myself
Large colony of Watermelon Mushrooms (that may not be the correct name)

15 Blue leg hermits
3 Red leg hermits
5- 10 astrea snails
1 Emerald Crab
God knows how many hitchhikers.....


Alright, here are some pics for you. The tank has only been up and running for a couple of weeks so as soon as everything settles down around here I will get you some better pics and a video or two. I'll have to call Spielberg.











Enjoy! Open to any and all comments and suggestions. I'd love to hear what you all have to say, and if I'm doing anything wrong let me know! I'm hear to learn.

Let me try those pics again....














drum role.....

Very nice looking tank. Great set up

Nice!  I love the clown.

That's a very decent setup. I like the rockwork a lot

Thanks for the wonderful comments everyone! Everything has been growing out well and the system is much more stable than I had anticipated. It has become very easy to regulate. I have recently aquired a 75 gallon tank and that will be my display in the coming months (I'm going to take it very very slowly!). I'm thinking this will be my prop tank as I have had so much luck growing out the mushrooms and have even had luck "Cloning" them. This has made for very quick production. My LFS now only sells my aquacultured mushrooms, which was my initial goal. Now I will start some other species as well and hopefully get my lfs to stop selling wild caught corals all together. I just got a 175 watt mh fixture that I am going to use for sps! I will keep you posted~

By the way, is anyone here from the wisconsin area. I just moved here from Illinois and have only been to one LFS (worked there actually). I'm looking for some place smaller so I don't need to drive down to Illinois to keep selling my mushrooms. I guess my "LFS" is so local anymore. About 2 hours away. I'll probably just start selling on frags.org.

Awesome clown!  Those are my favorite ones.  Nice set up too!