Reef Tank circa 1994

[coralfarmer]

Here's some pics of my reef tank circa 1994 or so. It was a Berlin style system. Sorry about the quality of the Photos but you can get an idea of what it looked like.

<a href="http://s1120.photobucket.com/albums/l487/coralfarmer/?action=view&current=photo.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1120.photobucket.com/albums/l487/coralfarmer/photo.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

250w 6500k Iwasaki bulb with Two 55 watt PC actinics. Notice all the Caulerpa sp.. I had lots of growth but not a lot of color. I remember I had a piece of M. digitata that grew from a little nub to about 10" tall.
List of corals
Acropora gemmifera
Acropora humilis
Acropora valida
Acropora millipora
Pavona sp.
PurpleMontipora digitata
An 8 year old Favia sp.

 

[coralfarmer]

Here's another shot

 

[jkreefer]

Haha, thats awesome to see how far the hobby has come. Crazy that you used to run 6500k bulbs. Thanks for sharing!

 

[coralfarmer]

Jeff, I remember when I switch to a Hamilton 10k and how excited I was about it.
The 6500k bulbs work great for growing corals.

 

[Grant W]

James, what kind of filtration were you using back then?

 

[coralfarmer]

Just a sump and a skimmer

 

[coralfarmer]

But the skimmer never worked

 

[northbay-reefer]

What a coincident, I just drank a bottle of 1994 Joseph phelp Cabernet and it never tasted so good.

Sps is hard to keep as it is so I am impressed that it survived in a simple set up like that. You must have had frequent water changes.

Were those colorized black and white photos? lol

 

[coralfarmer]

Tom. Weekly water changes. But back then nobody did water changes on their reef tanks that was the school of thought back then.

 

[coralfarmer]

I used Kalkwasser as my top off water and Calcium chloride if I needed to bump up the Ca. And I used Peter wilkens combi-san until about 2000 when there was a big controversy that it was mostly water. After that I stopped using it.

 

[crispyreef]

Curious what you used for water movement?

 

[coralfarmer]

Hydrothrustor-Q p103 by Filtronics in Oxnard Ca. External pump. It had a clear valute "front end" to see the impeller very cool. Put out 950 gallons an hour. I probably had an aquaclear 802 powerhead with a prefilter cartridge on it for water movement in the tank.