An Adventure in Shallow Reefs

My obsession with animals started at a young age and ever since I can remember, I’ve had pets of all shapes and sizes. 

My aquarium adventures like most other aquarists started with a fresh water system – mine was filled with guppies and an assortment of fresh water plants. I remember one of the females spawning the day I brought them home, causing me to rush back to the store to buy a breeding box. It was a pretty incredible experience and over the years I was able to gift guppies to half the town.

Growing up in a small coastal town on the east coast of South Africa I spent much of my youth at the beach surfing and fishing so my interest in keeping salt water fish grew from my love of the ocean. In my teens I set up a very basic salt water tank with water, fish and rocks all collecting from the beach near our home – it wasn’t anything special but my fascination grew from there.

Many years later, I was looking to combine my two passions, photography and animals so I decided to give reefing a proper go. After countless months of reading and obsessing over all the advances in the industry and the possibilities that provided for anyone with enough patience and passion, I set to designing own little piece of the ocean.

There is nothing more beautiful to me than a well designed, built and aquascaped shallow reef tank.

And so; Made in Africa – A Shallow Reef was born. It was a 700x700x300mm true shallow tank which started it’s life with the intention of creating a mixed reef and over time progressed into a SPS focused Zeovit tank.

The years I spent with that tank filled my heart with joy (and pain) but ultimately grew my obsession with reefing and I decided to upgrade my display.

I knew I wanted to stick with a shallow reef but decided to increase the length, so I had a 1400x700x300mm starphire peninsula display built and Made in Africa - A Shallow Reef V2 was born.

Over the past 18 months this tank has been running and was doing beautifully until disaster struck. After moving to our new home and completing the transfer perfectly we had a bit (lot) of a disaster - a company doing trenching in the area severed the power line to our home in the dead of winter and we were left without power for a few days. Unfortunately I was unable to save the tank and I lost nearly everything, it was one of the hardest moments in my reefing adventure.  

BUT! We will rebuild! 

This journal will follow the progression of this reef tank as I rebuild. I have some exciting new equipment upgrades coming up in the next few months months which I'm excited to be sharing with you, so stay tuned! 

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Happy Reefing!