Impressed, Intruiged & Inspired

I just came across a fantastic Japanese reef tank while surfing ReefCentral yesterday, and my eyes popped. Spent 1 hour gaping at the picture, and trying to figure out some things. Here's the link, see for yourself!!

Now, there's been some speculation about this tank. First, it's spotlessly clean, which is almost impossible. Even the most meticulous of reefers with the best setups have a tiny bit of algae problem somewhere. The bunch of green Caulerpa algae on the left side seems too well-checked as well - these things grow rampantly. People have been suggesting that the tank's been put together just for a photo shoot, but even so .. it's totally inspiring.

I'm just extremely intruiged as to where all the mechanical parts are, since no equipment is visible in that tank! Was so inspired I drew up a to-scale blueprint of a new tank (this pic totally changed my impression of what a dream tank should be like!), but I ran into a brickwall.

1) There's simply not enough biological filtration. We normally rely on denitrifying bacteria deep inside the live rock, but the tank has very little rock. Another concept is a deep sand bed, where the lower anoxic regions harbour bacteria. My current tank relies only on live rock and a deep sand bed for biological filtration, and even then it's just adequate.

Now, this Japanese tank does not have a deep sand bed - you can't keep a sand bed that spotlessly clean without vacuuming it, and if you ever try to vaccum a DSB ... *emergency sirens* ... be prepared for the nasty smell of H2S coming out from the anoxic regions.

2) Where's all the pumps to create internal circulation? Things can't thrive without circulation! And it's plain stupid to hide them amongst the rock - it means dismantling almost the entire thing, should the pumps fail.

To bypass these problems, I modified the sump compartment in my blueprint. The deep sand bed would be below the tank instead, with a seaweed culture for nutrient export. Which leaves no space for essential equipment like a protein skimmer, nielsen reactor and future expansion like calcium reactors. Modified the circulation a little, so that the 2-way valve waymakers sit behind the tank instead. This is, theoretically, workable - but it involves drilling a few holes in the tank, which is not seen at all in this Jap tank. This is all very intruiging. How did the Japanese do it??

They definitely know something the US, European and local reefers don't!