It’s been nearly ten years since we featured Amazing Aquariums & Reefs‘ fantastic ‘Japanese Style’ soft coral reefscape and this reef tank looks as good as ever. Despite all the intervening time perhaps the most remarkable thing about this tank is how little it’s changed.
A lot of us pay lip service to keeping it simple and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but this display is living proof of these practices. The tank has the same corals, the same general aquascape, and even the same light – a 250 watt, 14K metal halide lamp – although of course the lamp has been replaced several times.
The only real thing that’s changed about this reef is the return pump & the circulation pump have been replaced, and the population of fish has rotated around a little bit. After all these years the coolest part of this tank is the nostalgia it inspires, hearkening back to a time when reefs were even more simply built, with not an iota of electronic gear to control it – this reef is all analog and managed the old-fashioned way, by looking at it!
If you like this setup you’ll definitely want to make sure and watch the feature of Ali’s entire store and his tiny pico reef, all of which have a very zen feel about them. We’re gearing up to edit a ton of great new videos like this so if you don’t ever want to miss out, be sure and subscribe to the Reef Builders YouTube channel if you haven’t already.
