Reef tanks, corals and fish on their own for a year. No reef maintenance, no water changes. 

I couldn’t go a year without looking at that beautiful tank

"Snails are... Operational" lol.

I believe your aquarium was extremely balanced and everything was heathy before the neglect but this is proof that once balanced your aquarium really is a ecosystem in a glass box and should be treated like such not a fish tank or coral tank that requires ro water and a buckload of chemicals and supplements....🤷‍♂️ Great job beautiful aquarium

That scrape is so SATISFYING!

nitrates would like to know your location

I find this video PERSONALLY OFFENSIVE because my tank looks like shit in comparison!! Great tank

Some would call this animal cruelty, I say it’s a mature tank 🍾✌🏿.

Those starfish were just chilling until a hand just scraped them off 😔💔

This tank is beautiful. I leave mine alone for a week and my fish have a damn house party and destroy everything

This is the first soft coral dominate tank i like.

That’s so cool dude!!! If you have the proper infrastructure to start a self-sufficient reef tank than go for it! Infrastructure meaning enough live rock, live sand, correct corals, correct fishes and correct clean up crew to be a self sufficient ecosystem packed into the tank. I would like to see someone do this with a huge tank like a 10,000 gallon shark tank but obviously not many people have the money to even buy the tank lol! Super impressive good job mate 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻.

lmao I love this cause of how honest he is . slowly getting ready for my 1st tank 😤

Can we have another update on this please I enjoyed this

Wow some people can't even get a tank like that when they take care of it 👍👍

Cool video. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Love it.

This is the first time seeing your reef tank stuff on YT. We are similar when it comes to reef tanks. I started our tanks back in 1994 and did really well until El nino of 96 came and we were with out power for 18 days. This changed the way we thought about the tanks, water changes, equipment , food and supplements. Once we got it back up and running all we had to do is add fresh water and liquid food to our storage tank and it gravity feed the system daily as the water evaporated. I haven't had the 150g tank up in running in a long time but have kept some live rook in my 50g tank alive for the last 6 years. I am going to do a RU-vid reveal with a goal of 10K subscribers and do a budget friendly build. I use to travel to Bakersfield to buy my corals back then. There use to be a RC shop and reef tank store I think off of Ming.

This is a beautiful talk. Deffinetly your own slice of the ocean.

I love the wild look of this tbh, i would love to have a tank like this

Proof. You don't need to keep chasing numbers. Life, finds a way. Haha, movie references.

Make another update on this thing! Crazy how grown in everything is, beautiful tank!!!

Those plants are stunning. The lighting is amazing making them glow brilliant colors. I don’t know how you aren’t scraping it clean everyday just to sit and watch.

when the music started playing when you turned the nob at the end i knew i had to give this a like n comment

I've seen people who are meticulous with their thanks that don't look half that good. Whatever you're doing (or not doing) it must be working. Your tank looks great. Keep it up.

I would add a couple more fish . It's amazing how it's doing so good with no maintenance in over a year . It has its own ecosystem, it's own little world . Very cool

My mind is blown bro!!! So awesome!! I got a green bubble tip and he kills everything he touches!! How do yours not do the same? Everything about this blows my mind hahaa

I rarely water change my tank and have found it does better. I used to do regular water changes, filter maintenance etc. Had 2 pH crashes with everything die. I got fed up. Started again and did drastically less maintenance and have had no issues at all. I just keep the glass clean and do filter maintenance maybe every 3 mths. Honestly right now I'm at 4.5 months and the water parameters are perfect.

“Snails are operational” 😂

You do have a ton of live rock. That really helps with stabilizing things. But very cool vid!

We just had a deal happen which left the lights off for 6 days. I thought everything would be dead. Everything looks as good as the day they went off.

One swing away from total crash. Amazing they held on

Mine recently spent a year like this. It’s now stable as F and ready for a mix up of coral.

You savage 🤣 lol I love it! He said once or twice a year they eat no joke lmao 🤣 dude! Nailed it! Bad ass tank!

Pretty soon the only place we'll be able to see reef/coral is in personal aquariums

I’m gonna go ahead and call bullshit on that tank having not been touched in 12 months. First off coralline algae growth would be much much heavier, two he even says in video he moved all the anemones to one side proving he didn’t completely ignore it. Lastly that looks like maybe a months worth of algae growth.

Looks beautiful, it shows how much mucking with your tank does more damage. I think I just chucked all of my corals into the tank with the fish and pretty much do 4 month water changes, bit more than this tank but everything is flourishing. When you get the right balance everything does well

My tank has not had a change now in nearly two years. I have a top off I add water to when it’s low, change out the skimmer once in a while and feed rarely. I do have a dosing unit, and lights on a timer ramping up and down. We create ecosystems and this is a sign it’s working, hobbyists like to think their aesthetics of a healthy tank is best, and attempts to achieve faster than normal results should be done and used. The tank looks great, things grow things die and it all takes time. Stability in all your parameters is better than chasing ‘perfect’ numbers

Cool experiment I can't stand a dirty tank or sump would drive me nuts

That algae scraping is sooooooo satisfying.

Nature finds a way, looks like a balanced system, decent little experiment, lesson being you don’t need to mess about chasing perfection on a good set up 🤷🏽‍♂️

It's pretty cool, there's some stuff over there, doing good, y'know, yeah its pretty cool. Y'know?

A lot of soft coral and a lot of live rock with an established water column and things will take care of themselves. I once let my tank go for months and i do h2o changes weekly. But i have a mixed reef. All my sps died off slowly but surely. Soft stuff did well.

I wish I had the money to blow on an experiment like this. Really interesting, but not something I could ever bring myself to do. I love my animals too much even if I could justify the cost of possibly losing things over a year of no maintenance

Sea life besides fish, is so alienated towards, any living organism. Very facilitating

Good thing you have pretty much all softies in that tank, but yeah I hear you about the motivation coming and going. I’ve been reefing for about 15yrs and it comes and goes, I’ll get bit by the bug and really start putting effort into my reef and then months later I’ll leave it alone for months without doing anything (I also have really hardy corals, fish and dosers). I’ve found a happy medium where I can do water changes without turning anything off so it makes it way easier which in this hobby equates to better maintenance the less involved it is.

I could sit in front of this tank for hours watching all the oddities. Getting lost in imagination

Tank looks amazing buddy 👌🏻 I thought it was only me that never did water changes. Honestly they are not required. I’m loving the black and yellow clowns. Seem very rare, I’ve never seen them in my local stores.

If nobody else noticed the music coming on exactly when you twisted the knob, I did lmao on purpose or not haha nice tank though dude

Those tomatoe clowns are so aggressive, I thought they were dominos. That's crazy how good it looks for having not done anything for that long

Fantastic looking tank. Thanks for sharing

The tank is nice 👍 but you gotta keep that glass clean that's why we got the tanks to view the reality of things is they don't need much maintenance once we get em going and as long as you feed the fish the Coral's will eat different story if it's an only Coral tank then you have to feed the Coral's more often the main thing with what you did that kept everything alive was the top off each week if not you definitely would've lost everything because of the salinity rise would cause slow Coral death then poisoned water and complete coral die off overall love the tank what size is and love the sailfin tang I had a huge one years ago beautiful fish

1:17 New Zealand accent for 4 seconds??

That's bad ass colors man amazing job

Look up SeaLab28. It's a good thing for people that want to do no water changes. You simply throw a block in and when it dissolves over a month, throw another in.

People think algae on the glass is bad. Ive done the same with my nanos and after like a year and a half i cleaned the glass and saw i had bouncing rhodis ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Just ran across this video. I'd love to know what lighting your using on this tank, where the water comes from your adding, what temp you're keeping and how the fish are being fed. BTW, some Anemone's like more light and some literally hide from the light. Great looking tanks and congratulations on doing something very few of us can.

Doesn’t clean tank for a year Beautiful tank Me: doesn’t clean tank for 1 day *Shit tank*

That sailfin will grow FAST and will be the boss of that tank. They are cool fish tho, mine will let me rub his forehead.

What a beautiful tank! 🐠🐟

Other then the nems bleaching (likely from high phosphates) a softie tank thrives in dirty water :-)

Wow this looks incredible

This is what happens when you basically let nature do what it wants. Lol

Beautiful tank, can you imagine....one day well let me scrap off the crap and ta da perfection appears

This is what aquarium suppliers DON"T want you to see because they want your money!! My tanks go months without water changes! I like algae on the back wall and I test frequently. My parameters are always within spec. You build a self sustaining eco system, just sit back and admire your creation. :-)

May be show some before and after pictures of the tank

That's a beautiful tank.

I agree with all this...my corals get mad when I change water...tap for top off and its all happy

I’ve stuck to freshwater because I’ve always thought reef tanks were constant maintenance.

Beautiful tank

This can actually help the tank because it can make softies Bloom like crazy because they like slightly dirty water. (DISClAiMER: just don’t do this cause there’s a risk in all ur fish dying)

I'm Glad all the fish survived. It's a shame you don't clean the glass regularly as the aquarium looks beautiful, I would keep the glass clean so you can enjoy it 👍🏻

Mans having better coral reefs than nature

Wow amazing

While I wouldn't got a year without water changes it does certainly show you can be ok doing a lot less with a well established tank. I have a 220g and had been running gfo, carbon and bio pellets. Have since scaled back to just water changes and the tank is basically the same. I think that stuff helped when the tank was newer but now that it is established worrying about pests is much less of a worry.

Awesome tank and great job! I am planning on my first biocube 32g early next year and was wondering if it is possible to do away with maintenance for even just at least 30 days if the tank's parameters are all stable? I've been in the reef owners group and they all said that it cannot be done. This is if I go on vacation. Any tips?

I'm in the same position I'm to busy with school to bother with it especially when I had a parasite kill all my fish so now I'm letting it sit and be on its own. My biggest question is did you dose calc alk or mag?

That texture of the algae is due to the star fish. I can see them in my tank and i don't own a tang.

Looks awesome! I havent done a WC on my 3g nano reef in over 3 years now.

Gorgeous... Absolutely...

You have incredible live rock... Was it actually premium from an ocean or artificial dry? Thanks.

Maybe add a sea grass in the background, would add some wavey action to the tank and would eat up that algae

Waow awesome video...thanks for this video...you mean non of those high tech stuff....this is so amazing!!!....you sure there is nothing your hiding 👀...so cool😎....wish my tank could look as close to yours👍

I don’t buy the 1 year timeline. The glass would be covered in coralline not simply green algae

Soft corals are invincible as long as parameters are in a certain range.

Looks good bro 👍👍

Nature is so cool

Some think its cruel but understand that changes like this happen in the wild constantly not just due to human activity. This experiment could actually help ecosystems learn to better survive and evolve into much hardier/efficient forms of life. What I didn't like is how quickly he simulated bringing them back into a more stable environment. That almost never happens that fast in the wild and kinda botches what would otherwise be a good experiment (in my opinion). 1 year of neglect and 1 year to slowly recover would be interesting to see.

I can’t help but think our coral reefs are being destroyed so they can be sold and put in a small tank. Imagine the number of fish that could have used this reef as shelter, but hey, this guy has it for his own satisfaction.

Amazing tank!

the big mushroom like coral are cool

Sorry for all the ignorance in other comments. And sorry to those that are still constantly changing water and adding chems😂 Replicate Mother Nature… Tank looks great imo

I bet you wish that you kept the yellow tang with the prices so high now.

Did you feed them?????

water changes can cost you more money in the long run let nature do its job

After i left my wife my small 60liter aquarium stayed with her but she didn't do anything at all with it. The aquarium didn't have light, heater, filtration, food or clean water in over 1 year. But some fish and shrimp stayed alive. No idea how. But i guess less is more

The power of a good light. The key has been found

Nice variety. Those asterina starfish area plague. They irritate the underside of coral when they start multiplying

Everyone grab your bong this is going to be good

hidden beauty 😍

ITS THE CORAL!

Wow looks amazing