My name is Scott Leif. It's a great honor to have my tank featured as tank of the month. It's nothing I ever expected and I am truly flattered. I got started in the salt water hobby around 1988 when I purchased my first salt water tank which was about 75 gallons as I recall. I had mostly predators in that tank such as triggers and lionfish. After moving to a new house around 1990, I was given a 90 gallon tall tank which I again setup as a predator tank. Shortly after that I bought a 100 gallon tank and had acquired a very large moray eel which I named Gorby after the Russian President due to a birth mark on the eel's head. I realized that the tank was too small for this eel and ordered an acrylic 240 gallon tank which really opened a can of worms for me. I quickly found my fascination with sharks. What started out as catching leopard sharks off the local piers and beaches and bringing them home wound up with me importing fish and exotic sharks such as white tip reef sharks, black tips, lemon sharks, etc. I ended up putting kiddy pools in my garage to house them while I found them new homes. At one point I was selling sharks and fish to hotels such as the Mirage in Las Vegas as well as other stores that dealt in exotic sharks. It wasn't long that even the 240 seemed small so I decided to order a 480 gallon acrylic display for Gorby and the sharks. One day while sitting in my living room watching TV, I heard and felt a huge bang. My first thought was that somebody had run their car into the front of the house. I ran outside but there was nothing there. When I came back in the house, I noticed the water in the tank was sloshing around and the water was stained blood red. Gorby decided to take out a leopard shark that I had in the tank. With one quick snap, he split the shark in half and the attack displaced enough water that it shook the entire house. I was actually pretty shocked. He was very well fed and extremely tame as I handled him all the time. Goby would allow me to rub his chin and loved having his sides scratched and rubbed. He would even let me pick him up out of the tank. Despite being over five feet long and being extremely heavy, he was a gentle giant but the leopard shark wasn't so lucky. Due to the fact that I had white tip reef sharks in my tank, it had become clear that it was time to find Gorby a new home which I did. It was a decision that I have regretted to this day. I know he never got the attention that I gave him ever again.
I continued selling sharks for another year or so until I got tired of the feeding regimen and became interested in reefs. By this time it was around 1995 or 1996. I opted to sell the remaining sharks and convert the tank over to a reef. Initially, my success wasn't good. I remember the tank being inundated with all kinds of algae. It got to the point where I lost interest in the tank for a number of months and just ignored it. It was then when I cleaned the glass after months of neglect that the algae issue burnt itself out. This reignited my interest in the reef tank.
Fast forward to 1997 when I moved into my new home that was purchased with three criteria in mind. First and foremost was an ideal space for my 480 gallon tank. The tank is 4' wide x 8' long x 2' tall. As such, finding a home that would provide a good space for such a monstrosity would be a challenge. I had this tank for a few years prior and it was setup as a mixed reef system at my rental house. Other factors that contributed to my home purchase were space for my entertainment system and a good size three car "œman cave" garage. After months of looking I found my home.
This was my first home purchase and as such, it was quite an experience. As part of the system move, the tank would be picked up by the company that originally built it. It needed some scratches removed and they were local and willing to turn it around in 24 hours. Escrow closed on a Friday around noon. Within minutes of escrow closing we were in the new house hacking the walls away. The plan was to convert a room that was next to my den into an office and utilize the tank as part of the divider wall. It would be built-in the wall and you can walk around the other three sides. To do this, the wall needed to be hacked, doors removed, bathroom door moved etc. Two days later (Sunday, the tank was torn down at the old house. Livestock, water and the live rock was moved to the new house via a U-Haul truck and I set up kiddy pools in the garage to house everything. Monday the tank manufacturer came to the old house, picked up the tank and polished it out. They delivered the tank on Tuesday and I managed to get the tank plumbed and setup with all my rock and livestock that night. There are lots of additional details including pictures of the initial install in my build thread.
About two year later I decided it was time to redo my aquascape as I had more creative ideas in mind. This included using pond foam to glue all the live rock together and make a more natural looking aquascape. Again, everything was moved to kiddy pools in the garage for the 24 hour project. I had my buddy Conde come over to polish out scratches and then I spent the next day building the aquascape using new and existing live rock and pond foam to glue the rocks together into a more natural looking aquascape. That was about 17 years ago and the same aquascape remains in place today. The tank has gone through many changes over the years including lots of equipment upgrades that I did to improve the quality of my system as well as its efficiency but never drained. Back in 2009, my electric bill was nearly $1100 a month. I opted to do a major equipment upgrade including new sumps, pumps, LEDs to replace the metal halides as well as other changes resulting in my electric bill dropping to $350 a month while I also increased my flow substantially. While the upgrade was insanely expensive, the reduction in my power bill paid for the upgrade the first year and has saved me tens of thousands since. This was also the point that my tank really took off. The entire upgrade was detailed in my build thread and also covered in some LA Fish Guys episodes.
Today my tank is a very mature mixed reef. It's been up and running for what amounts to 19 years with the exception of a two-day tear down for the re-aquascape around 17 year ago. I've always loved having lots of fish and the movement from soft corals. For the most part my tank was dominated by soft corals and some LPS. A little over a year ago, I was offered some SPS frags and begrudgingly took them. I say begrudgingly because I never had much success with SPS corals in the past and don't like taking things that I don't have much confidence in keeping alive. Much to my surprise they took off and grew like weeds which really opened another can of worms. I'm sure you all know how that goes. Since then, every SPS frag or coral I put in my tank thrives which is a blessing and a curse since it gets costly and I've run out of room in my tank or should I say tanks. Over the last several months, I've started removing soft corals and LPS to make way for other coral as well as those that are growing. For me it's been a constant learning experience. You place a frag with good intentions and next thing you know, it's growing like a weed and infringing on other corals and or taking up prime real estate. This is especially problematic when the tank already has corals growing everywhere. In fact, I haven't added a soft coral or LPS in many years but the softies and some other corals are literally trying to grow out of the water. I also had to frag out a hammer colony that grew in 2-3 years from a pinky nail sized frag into a colony that was well over 2' across and over 200 heads. Fortunately I recently added a frag tank to my system to handle the overflow of corals and provide me a place to keep new arrivals and frags from the main display.
Tank
Presently the system consists of the main 480 gallon display which is setup as a 4'x8'x2' tall peninsula, a 90 gallon custom sump, 90 gallon custom Refugium with 4" deep sand/mud bed and chaeto, a 60 gallon display Refugium that has some soft corals, a couple mangroves, and a ton of algae. Then there is a 40 gallon frag tank all of which are plumbed together. The display Refugium and frag tank are fed from a manifold on my return pump and both drain back to the return section in my Refugium below the display tank. My total system volume I estimate to be around 700 gallons.
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