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Turns out there is a whole series of videos made on Peter’s custom 1,350g reef tank and fish room.
Today’s video features the fish room and filtration system, lighting and the entire maintenance routine.
I especially appreciate how well thought out this fish room and entire system is designed. I would love to learn more about the quiet pumps he mentions. This is what my business Gibbons Aquaria does (16 years now) and I’m just loving this system.
Oh – and there’s more footage of the mangrove wall filtration system too.
Enjoy!
What was your favorite part?
How many LED fixtures did you count? I think they are Orphek Atlantik, and I counted somewhere around 15 of them (could be more).
I never thought that my tank would be able to help save a friend’s marriage – or even help them be better parents.
You might be doubting me here, but just stick with me and check this story out.
Back when we had a 90-gallon salt water aquarium in our living room, we had some friends with twin newborns (girls) over for dinner. It was their first evening out of the house since the twins were born.
They showed up with all the gear – times two – and there was a big ruckus to get settled upon their arrival.
And when it was time to sit down to dinner, Donna (mother of the twins) said “I don’t know how we are going to sit down and have a nice quiet dinner with the twins here.”
In other words, she was used to the twins crying and needing constant attention, and how in the world were we going to be able to have a conversation at the dinner table? So I told her to put the twins in their car seats and park them in front of the aquarium … and
It worked!
Instant silence and happy babies. She punched her husband in the arm and said “We are SO GETTING AN AQUARIUM!” With twin new born babies, you can imagine they weren’t getting a log of sleep. And the twins were quiet for the entire dinner. I mean – I’m talking 45 minutes and not a peep.
So if you know of any first time parents with newborns … do them a favor and invite them over for dinner. Trust me … they need it.
Park the baby (or babies) in front of the tank and watch the look on your friends’ face. They will love you for it.
Do you have a story about how your aquarium has helped in unexpected ways? I’d love to hear about it. Post it in a comment and tell us about it.
Here is some very special video footage of one of our albino bamboo sharks hatching from its egg case at the Ocean Explorium (New Bedford, MA).
The amazing part is how we got the footage of this baby shark at the moment it hatched.
They typically take anywhere from 3-4.5 months to hatch.
One of our colleagues from Massachusetts State Marine Fisheries places a GoPro camera on the tank at night and recorded all night long, for about a month. And then they had to go back through all the footage to find this little beauty. And there’s no sound with it, so there’s nothing wrong with your computer or speakers.
Any amount you can contribute is greatly appreciated and goes toward helping us to inspire kids and teachers and their families appreciate our ocean environment and take better care of it.
Would you agree that some parts of keeping a salt water tank can be confusing?
Are you stuck on some aspect of setting up your reef tank or choosing the right filter (for example)?
Here’s a quick video of our 700g reef tank and a proposition to help you with your problem.
Leave a comment and tell me what you need help with. Remember – the best comment will get a free 30-minute phone consultation with me, where I will help walk you through the solution to your problem.
This secret is one of the keys to a successful reef tank or salt water fish only tank.
And is often taken for granted.
Watch this video to learn this key habit that will help you succeed with your tank. It just works. I bet you can’t guess what it is. Your corals in your reef tank will thank you. So the quesiton you have to ask yourself is, do you want to do the next cool thing that “they” are talking about, or do you want to do what works.
*** Leave a comment and tell us something amazing you’ve discovered in your tank.
Do you have a tank chart or a log book to record your observations in for your reef tank?
How to you keep track of what is going on in your reef tank?
Share it with us in a comment, and the best one will get featured in an upcoming video.
Wow – now that’s a big window! Here’s a cool video (scroll down) of the largest manufacturer of custom acrylic aquarium windows for salt water fish tanks in the entire United States (Reynolds Polymer), showing huge aquarium windows being built – in action. Reynolds Polymer is the leading company in the U.S. when it comes to building large acrylic windows for public aquariums and zoos and huge tanks in casinos and the like. Check out this video. What you’ll see there may redefine “big”.
One of the biggest mistakes people make when they have an acrylic salt water fish tanks tanks built for them, is going with the cheapest company.
This might sound like the cheapest price makes sense, but this is often not the case with some acrylic tank manufacturers competing on price. You see, the danger here is when the tank manufacturer uses thinner material, which is significantly less expensive. Of course this makes the tank cheaper, but now the tank walls are too thin, which means they bow or deflect too much when filled with water. And it means that there is not enough bonding surface to withstand the pressure when the tank is filled.
Most off the shelf tanks are not an issue, since they make so many of them. But the biggest concern is with custom salt water fish tanks. Remember that my business Gibbons Aquaria, Inc. has specialized in custom salt water fish tanks (design, installation and maintenance) for the last 16 years. So we have learned how to identify reputable companies and when a manufacturer is under-bidding the price just to get the job (bad news for everyone).
So, what do you do when you want a custom tank built and are trying to keep the cost as low as possible? Can you say “price break”? What I mean by price break, is that when the size of the aquarium reaches certain dimensions, the thickness of the acrylic needs to increase, which makes the price jump – sometimes by as much as 15 or 20% or even more. So the trick is to be willing to change your tank dimensions to find the price break in acrylic thickness – the next size down. Ask the tank manufacturer, “So if your price is $1,500 on the dimensions I gave you, how can we shrink the dimensions of the tank by as little as possible so that we can safely go with a thinner acrylic”.
What the disreputable tank manufactures do instead is they keep your original dimensions (i.e. they don’t shrink them) and they price out the tank with thinner acrylic, risking that it will fail because it is too thin for the overall tank dimensions.
Here’s an example of what I’m talking about.
Say my ideal tank size is 77″L x 38″FB x 40″H.
The tank manufacturer says it will cost $900 and the tank will be made out of 1″ thick acrylic.
So I ask the tank manufacturer what he can do to lower the cost. They say, “Well, if you shorten the tank height from 40″H down to 36″, then we can safely use 3/4″ thick acrylic instead of 1″ acrylic and it will still be structurally sound – and it will lower the price by $300″. I think you get the idea. You now saved $300 and didn’t go over your budget and you didn’t compromise on quality.
I hope this helps you out and you save yourself from buying an acrylic custom salt water fish tank that was not built properly.
As soon as I saw this, it reminded me of the bower bird (A.K.A. Bird Of Paradise), which makes elaborate and decorative nesting sites to attract a mate. Another fish that does something similiar is the stickleback.
I’ve been diving in the Bahamas where Sargent Major Damsel fish had scoured out depressions in the sand (similar to what bluegills and bass do) for mating. We were swimming along admiring the reef, when my partner Jake’s camera was all of a sudden being attacked by a 5″ long Sargent Major Damsel. At first, we were so amazed that this little fish would take on something so huge as a human, and then we realized we were hovering right above his nest. As soon as we backed away, the fish relented.
Do you have a favorite reef creature or salt water fish with an interesting behavior? Make a comment and tell us about it.
Here’s another great video from Jeff Macare of ReefDynamics.com, explaining the use of biopellets in reef tank and fish only tanks. Thank you to Jim Stime who created the video (part1 of a 2-part series). The meat of the video begins a 2:25 (if you want to skip over the intro).
Again, Jeff goes very deep, explaining this better than anyone else I’ve come across. Not only does Jeff really know his stuff, and makes great products, but he is also very good at explaining it – which is what I’m all about – helping you understand in simple ways the many complicated parts of keeping a saltwater aquarium.
After you watch the video, give me some feedback and let me know what you thought of it and if you have any questions of your own.
