If you start a new hobby such as learning an instrument or learning to SCUBA dive, you don’t start by learning rad guitar solos or diving as deep as you want, you have to start slow – walk before you can run. But for some reason the reef aquarium hobby has new aquarists start with building a full-on reef tank and all the corals, fish, invertebrates and equipment needed to keep them alive.
Nano aquariums are a step in the right direction for new reefers but we believe that there’s an even easier stepping stone to learning about the needs of coral by starting with the bare fundamentals. For several years now we’ve championed the concept of a coral ‘showcase’ aquarium or ‘zero-reef’ which is little more than a glass box with a couple corals in it, for which you barely need a small filter and basic small light to keep everything coasting and thriving.
In our latest video we shared our six month old 20 gallon coral showcase aquarium which has been on cruise control since we set it up in and it’s truly become something special. The Ultum Nature Systems 20 gallon aquarium is powered simply by a matching UNS Delta 60 canister filter which has never been cleaned, and it illuminated by a cheap, 25 watt Luxcare LED strip light we bought on Amazon for less than fifty bucks.
We don’t test the water, we don’t dose any additives because we simply change out nearly all the water once a week with water from an existing reef tank and it helps to reset the chemistry to known ideal natural seawater values. Part of the reason for the success is that it’s a bare bones set up with very little that can go wrong but it doesn’t hurt that the corals are very easy going Fungia, Fox and Elegance corals and one yellow scroll Turbinaria.
Despite trying to keep the tank as minimal as possible we’ve still managed to cultivate a decent growth of coralline algae on the bottom of the tank, probably thanks to the very light filtration and lower intensity lighting. This coral showcase aquarium has us motivated to try and recreate this kind of setup using incrementally more demanding corals as we piece together just a little more gear so keep a lookout for the next showcase aquarium with more coral and less reef.
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