Tropical Fish Hobbyist - October 2010

the reefer
My Soft-Coral Aquarium
People often say, “Don’t fix what isn’t broken.” I don’t listen. When it comes to aquariums, I have a habit of completely redoing things
on occasion when there’s no real need
to, and this time it’s my 125-gallon reef
aquarium. I have now switched it from
being almost entirely stocked with stony
corals to being stocked almost entirely with
soft corals. While I’ve had many softies
scattered about in tanks over the years, I’ve
never really filled a tank with them until
now, and I thought I’d tell you about what
I’ve done and why.

Stocking the Tank

To start, I’d been thinking about setting
up a 55-gallon reef tank in my office for
some time. I wanted to go with all small-
polyp stony corals, and I had plenty of
them in my 125-gallon. I got the 55 set up
and started taking pieces of this and that
from the big tank and moving them into
the smaller one. Somewhere during this
process, I decided to basically go all the
way and take essentially all of the stonies
out of the big tank so I could restock it
with just softies.

James Fatherree, MSc has had more than a quarter century’s experience with aquariums of all kinds and has been deeply involved in the reef hobby for more than a decade. His background includes diving, collecting, and photography, and he has worked in the trade on both retail and wholesale levels. With all this experience, he has seen his share of aquarium disasters, both natural and manmade, making invaluable his insights on how to save your tank during a crisis.