Thank you for dropping by! I'm W. Brian Murphy. But you probably figured that out from the WBRIANMURPHY.com address... I hope you enjoy checking out my reef.

First, a little history. I've always loved the look of a saltwater tank. But I never had one when I was younger. A few years back, my wife gave me the go ahead to get a saltwater tank. We had no idea what we were doing, but shoot, that's never stopped me before! So I set up a 29 gallon mixed reef tank. I put all kinds of wonderfully beautiful creatures into this little box of water. Well surprise, surprise,... most of them died. So I sought out some help and came across some really nice (and very fun!) members of a local reef club. I learned a lot from these folks. It was quickly pointed out to me about the chemistry of these tanks, and how more volume will help to minimize the mistakes I would go on to make. (The solution to pollution is dilution!) So I added an overflow box (GASP! A Siphon oveflow box! More on that later...) I added a 20G long tank to the system as a combination sump/refugium. It helped a lot. I added volume, and as and added benefit I got more flow out of it in the form of my return lines. Cool.

So once that was set up, things plugged along OK, but I didn't really have a thriving tank. My lighting was the Coralife 50/50 PC lighting. It looked pretty bright to me, but things in my tank only did "OK". Well, a fellow club member helped me set up a retrofit into a canopy over my tank. We retrofitted my PC lighting into a canopy and added a 175 watt Metal halide light to the mix. WOW! Huge difference in the quality of my corals. And the look of the tank was exactly what my memory told me I was trying to achieve.

Nirvana? Hardly. Looked grreat, but my wife and I tend to go away as often as we can (camping/cruising/etc...). Well, my poor sister takes care of my animals when i go away. I have had a total of 3 "floods" from my overflow's siphon failing. Well all three of them have been when my sister was watching the tank. She's frightened of my tank at this point, and hesitates to come and feed them. That's the problem with a siphon overflow, eventually it GOING TO fail. It's not a question of if. It's "when". But we plugged along, and things did "OK".

Jump to the not too distant past... Recently my wife celebrated her 900th birthdday (or something like that). Well someone gave her a scented oil thing-a-majig, which we put on our mantle. To save the long story, the oil sccent was dispersed into the air, and eventually (2-3 days) into my tank where is caused the oxygen level to plummet; killing almost everything in the tank. I instantly (after the pain of watching everything die slowly- it took a few days to igure out the cause of the carnage) thought this to be the perfect opportunity to get a bigger tank!

Which basically brings us up to current (as of 3/2007)...

And BTW, my wife's name is Karen. And she's not really 900 years old... Yet.

MY CURRENT SET UP

My current system is a 65 gallon mixed reef tank with a 20 gal long tank as a sump/refugium. The sump probably holds approx 15 gallons of water. I have 40 pounds of fine, aragonite sand as the substrate. I have a total of approximately 85 lbs. of live rock in the display tank and the sump. This was rock, from my old system (after allowiing it time to get "clean") as well as a mixture of newly purchased live rock and base rock. The display tank's rockwork is fixed in place using acrylic rods which run through holes drilled in the rocks. This allows for an nice, "open" look to the rockwork. My plans with this tank are to incorporate a few more fish into the main display, as that is what my original "love" in the saltwater hobby was; saltwater fish are just so beautiful, and vibrantly colored. As the tank progresses Ii will add photos and videos. I have a few corals in the tank currently, and they seem to be doing well. I want to keep the tank as clean looking as possible, so I am trying to use the modifications found online for the maxijet powerheads. I have modified 2 Maxijet 1200 Powerheads using the MJMODS.COM kits. They have a very finished look to them. They will allow for a whole lot of water movement with very few things in the display that obstruct the view. The MJ Mod is so effective that I had to scale down the size of the propeller twice to stop the sandstorm from happening. The larger propellers made the tank look like a snowglobe!

My lighting now is made up entirely of T5 lights. I have two 39 watt actinic lights, and four 39 watt 10K bulbs. This thing is BRIGHT! The few corals I currently have are loving it!

Here is my Lawnmower Blenny; "Homer".

Looks a little like Homer Simpson, no?

Here is my Yellow Tang; "Sunshine".

Given to us by ScottP, and named by Coralyn, his daughter.

Candy Cane Trumpets

Orange Ric (another try)

? Brain Coral ?

Who am I?