120 Gal Coral Reef Aquarium. Photoset from several years of effort as an aquarium hobbiest 📷

I wanted to post a series of photographs I took of a saltwater reef aquarium that I had for several years. Reef tanks had always interested me and I did a lot of research to find out how to keep a simple tank (maintenance wise) with easy to grow corals that could spread on their own and grow well with the equipment I was planning to use. Here is the result:

I had some large clams, which truely have some awesome colors. This clam grew from about 4inches to nearly 12 in length over a couple years.

This tank is 4' long by 2' high and deep. Its 120gallons with a sump tank underneath for the all the filtration.

I have a dive case for a point and shoot cannon camera, that I was able to reach in with to take a few of these photos, so the reflections and glass aquarium has no effect. Ended up getting great color with this method. These are ricordia mushrooms.

Some brown polyp zooanthids.

Close up of the lage clam

Green zooanthids

Purple mushroom corals and on the left, a candy cane coral

A pulled back shot of the corals on base rock, covered in purple coralline algae.

A close up of the candy cane coral

Several corals, frogspawn, green star polyps, pipe organ and others.

So, I hope you enjoy the photos and please comment if any questions or if you have your own reef tank pics to share.

Amazing photos! Reef tanks are so cool! How much time would you say you had to spend on maintenance per week?

I have a few freshwater aquariums myself, and hope I will be able to purchase a saltwater tank sometime, but right now the cost of getting one is way to high.

Thanks valth, I designed it all to be as low maintenance as I could. When I started it probably took 2hrs per week, but once I just left it alone, figured out the right calcium and hardness additives, it was only about 30mins per week pretty much just to do water change. I never messed with chemicals much, just did an above average water change with new salt and voila, everything right just from the proper salt minerals.

Cool, thanks for replying. I've always hard that saltwater is a lot of work, but I suppose that is mostly true if you are unable to get stable chemical concentrations in the water.

Ya, a lot of people buy fish and corals on how they look, and not on how easy they are to care for. make's a big difference in the amount of work to keep a tank of staghorns for example or just lps and softies (like leather corals and such). I'd say 10 to 1 in maintenance.

Wow, that's really cool. It couldn't be easy.

Do you still have them?

Not anymore, but may have to again someday. We're moved to an acreage, so switched to horses to care for. unfortunately, they are even more work. haha. but more fun as well.