Sir Galahad searched for the Holy Grail, Ponce de Leon the Fountain of Youth, and Indiana Jones for the Arc of the Covenant, like them, we hobbyists search for something that at times seems just as unobtainable: the perfect reef tank. This is the quest that most of us start as soon as we get into the hobby and search for as long as we have water in a glass box. In my forty years in the hobby, I feel I have achieved what I considered a perfect tank once, now some thirty years ago, and sadly I have not come close since.
Fortunately, since that time I have seen many other tanks that I consider perfect, although their owners may dispute that notion. But before getting into these tanks and why I considered this tank from thirty years ago to be perfect, I think I should first discuss the criteria that I feel make a perfect tank. Unfortunately, in my quest to seek another perfect tank, I have probably experimented far too often and changed things too many times to achieve one. But while my predilection for experimenting has kept me from achieving my goal, it has afforded me the opportunity to learn quite a bit.
The first thing that I learned is that a perfect tank is more in the mind’s eye than in reality and it differs for each hobbyist. While I have seen other tanks that I consider perfect, I also know that they are not perfect all the time and that at any given time disaster can strike. All of these tanks have commonalities that make them perfect and these will be discussed below.
The first criteria that I look for in one of these masterpieces is obvious: healthy thriving fish and corals. This is pretty much a no-brainer, as most of us have healthy fish and corals. But in a perfect tank, it is much more than that in that the fish and corals for lack of a better term seem to be in harmony. That is the corals all look like pictures out of a Veron book and the fish complement them in their colors and activity.
Just as we all know when we see a painting that it is a work of art, so too is the case with a perfect tank in terms of the corals and fish. While the corals are thriving they also aren’t overgrowing one another or having a war, but rather they all have their space and are not battling one another. This may be why most perfect tanks are only perfect for periods of time and then the corals either need to be pruned or removed completely lest they kill each other.
However, I have seen a couple of perfect tanks where the corals seemingly grew into the space available and then they seemingly started growing much more slowly. I do not know if they were devoting their energy to protecting their space, or were using it to get ready to spawn, but I have now seen this often enough that I recognize when a tank has kind of plateaued and the corals grow more slowly allowing the tank to be enjoyed.
Obviously, everyone has a different opinion of what corals look best in their tanks and how the tank is aquascaped, but to me at least when there is a tank that I consider perfect, the corals look like they all belong together. For this reason, I do not consider a tank full of nothing but expensive frags to be in any way close to a perfect tank. As a lover of frags, I understand that draw that they have with seemingly an amazing array of colors jammed into a tiny space like a multicolored jewel. Unfortunately, when looked at from across the room they lose a lot of their luster, unlike full-grown colonies.
In this regard, a tank to me can only be perfect when the corals have been allowed to grow into at least fist-sized or bigger colonies. This is because until they reach this size their beauty cannot be fully realized. I know this may sound like heresy, but I will take a full-grown colony of a green Bali slimer or an Oregon tort over a multi-dimensional rainbow anything frag any day. In my opinion, the perfect tanks I have seen, and these even include a couple of nano tanks, all have corals bigger than just frags.
Similar to the corals, the fish in a tank also are in harmony and add to the beauty of the tank not only with their colors but also with their behavior. In this regard, there are two schools of thought as to how fish can make a tank perfect, beyond their just not bothering the corals. First, there is the way that most of us stock our tanks, in that we have as wide a variety of fish as possible and the differences in their colors and form help make the tank stand out.
Contrary to this are the stand-out tanks that are dominated by one or two schools of fish and these schools help replicate what is seen on the reefs. All of these tanks though, have at least one star fish housed in them. This may just be something I look for, but I always love it when I find a unique fish in a tank that catches my eye, even if it is a cryptic fish that only comes out of hiding on a rare occasion.
If I were to do one more tank in my drive for perfection it would be along these lines. First, it would only house three or five coral colonies and these would be allowed to grow to fill out the tank. There would be a stand of staghorn corals, multiple table corals all of the same species and coloration along with two or three heads of some other type of bushy type of coral. These could all be in groupings or intermixed, but there would be no more than five types of coral in total. Then going along with this theme there would be two or three schools of fish. A school of green chromis, a school of anthias, and possibly a school of cardinalfish. To me at least, this over time would be the perfect tank.
I should point out, however, that a perfect tank goes beyond just being stocked with great corals and fish. The next criteria I have for a perfect tank is that it is so well-designed and planned that it requires only regular maintenance and rarely has any problems. How many of us long for the day when we could sleep peacefully because we knew our tank was so stable and its inhabitants so happy that we did not have to worry about what problem might arise when we woke up? In this regard, most of the owners I know who have what I consider perfect tanks, all feel this way about their tanks. Their tanks are all very stable, they rarely if ever add anything new, fish or coral-wise, and their biggest tasks are regular testing and maintenance of the equipment.
I really can’t stress enough how not having to constantly worry about a tank helps to make it perfect. The one other aspect that all of these phenomenal tanks had in common is that their owners spend more time just relaxing and enjoying watching their tanks than they do putzing around with them. I am actually trying to follow their lead and am finally experimenting less and adding less to my tanks with the goal of having a tank like I had thirty years ago.
One of the other attributes that these perfect tanks have in common is that their owners do not follow the fad of the month. While none of them use the same equipment or methodologies on their systems, they all follow what I consider standard operating procedures. There is no “secret sauce” or one-of-a-kind piece of equipment that has allowed them to achieve perfection. Instead, it is due to their planning, patience, and diligence in doing the mundane. While all of these tanks have been up for a minimum of three years, for many it was a rocky first few years with all of them having had the usual ups and downs that go with fully establishing a tank, with some of these downs being major.
Establishing and maintaining a “perfect” reef tank is the goal of every hobbyist and considering how often I have seen tanks of this quality, I know it is quite possible. But in order to be achieved we have to fight our urge to constantly change things for incremental improvement or follow what is hot at the time and give what we are doing time to take root and grow. For my entire time in the hobby, I am more guilty than most of not following these rules. Hopefully having learned the hard way I am now on a more likely path toward achieving a perfect tank. If I achieve it again, it will only have taken me thirty years, which is a testament to what persistent stupidity can achieve.
