To establish a living marine reef aquarium became a consuming interest of mine after I read John Tulloch's book "Natural Reef Aquariums: Simplified Approaches to Creating Living Saltwater Microcosms". That was in May 2006, and in April 2007 after spending a fair bit of money and a lot of time planning and constructing (the major projects were strengthening my family room floor to support 1800 lbs, and designing and building a canopy) - the saltwater was put in the tank and the system started up.

The aquarium includes a 5' long 18" wide 24" high display tank (about 115 US gal) supported by a 100 gal sump tank in the basement holding about 70 gal. The lighting consists of two 140 watt actinic (blue marine flourescents) and two 250 watt metal halide lamps. A Digital Aquatics Reefkeeper II controller manages the lights, pumps, heaters, cooling fans and monitors the pH of the water.

Since the setup in April, many organisms have been steadily added - besides 150 lbs of live rock, the first snails and hermit crabs and cleaner shrimp, and then corals, fish, and some truly strange creatures, cinluding recently a rose bubble tip anemone.

This gallery is not intended to be a comprehensive photographic catalogue nor a timeline of the aquarium's progress - just a place to put pictures of the aquarium that I sporadically shoot.