The Flagship reef tank is an aquarium display we’ve been working with at the Reef Builders Studio for a little over three years and lately this tank has really been turning up. Being a six foot long peninsula style aquarium it really feels like there’s two sides of a layout to try and balance out and speaking frankly, the most challenging part of this aquarium has been trying to balance out the coral placement and the strength of the layout of this aquarium from all sides and angles.
We’re not yet 100% satisfied with where the overall coral population is at, no reefer is ever truly content, but at least it’s really headed in the right direction. We’d chalk up the progress of this reef tank to two main factors with the first one being keeping the reef tank equipment super simple, just to cover all the fundamentals of reef keeping.
One thing that keeps this tank super streamlined from a software stand point is that it uses all Ecotech Marine products for the core functions such as a Vectra return pump, Versa dosing pumps, Vortech MP60 flow pumps, and Radion Gen 4 Pros so everything is accessible on Mobius. The only other devices on the tank are the Maxspect Aeraqua Duo for a skimmer, an Avast Marine K1 kalkwasser reactor (supplied with fresh water by another Versa), a Johnlen heater, and the only other device we really want to add to the aquarium is an automatic filter roll.
Not having sand or too many fish or too much really helps keep the nutrients low, so low in fact that the other major improvement to the Flagship reef is that we’ve been adding phosphates once or twice a week to keep the value from bottoming out at 0.00ppm for more than a few days. This is a really different approach to maintaining nutrients at the Reef Builders Studio as we don’t try to hold a target value, but instead think of PO4 dosing like a kind of feeding – you don’t try and maintain a set value for food for your fish, you feed them and then there’s no more and then you feed them again.
We cover a lot more details in our latest video showcase so be sure and give it a watch as it’s a very healthy reef tank with lots of eye candy and larger colonies with popping colors under daylight spectrum, no artificially dark blue tank or orange filters but if this video cracks 2000 likes we’ll feature it under more ‘flattering’ lighting.
