High Tide Aquatics

How did YOU get addicted to Reef keeping

zambavi

zambavi

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So I've scrolled through several dozen pages here to see if there has already been a similar thread and I had no luck... If there already is one my apologies...

The question is... How did you get started (get addicted) to Reef keeping?

My experience started in the Summer of 1999 in Charleston SC... they were opening a large public aquarium and I got introduced/signed up through a buddy to volunteer at the Turtle Rescue that is part of it. The loggerhead turtles is what sparked my passion for SW and Reefs. Though I know I'll never be able to keep one they are still one of my favorite SW creatures. If you ever get a chance to do volunteer work at a place like this I would highly recommend it. It is an amazing experience. The main SW display here is pretty cool to. It is a three story 385,000 gallon aquarium with over 300 species in it.... including a few Loggerhead turtles upwards of 300 pounds. From here I wanted to have a tank of my own which resulted in my first SW tank. 10 years later I'm still in it for the long hall... have never been in a position to have a system larger than the 120 i'm building now but I'm hoping to do a whole lot bigger here in the next couple of years. So there's my story... How did you get addicted???

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I've always loved aquariums, since I was a kid (like 1000 years ago)! My Dad has a 55g in his house (has been there for 25 years) and when I was a kid I took over maintenance of it. It took a while for me to not clean EVERY SINGLE PIECE OF GRAVEL. I cleaned and DISINFECTED the filter, then I'd rinse the whole tank with disinfectant and ditto with the gravel. I had no idea about the ANN cycle. Then I learned about it and got biowheel filters, undergravel filters, etc.

One day as I had emptied the ENTIRE TANK OF WATER (to be replaced with fresh tap water of random temperature) I noticed a single fry at the bottom of the tank! I was amazed! A baby fish! So I got into trying to raise them with putting fake plants, etc into the tank. That lead to lots of reading. Then eventually, we had guppies and the "joy" of baby fish sort of waned as they took over the entire tank.

So when I moved to SF, I had my own planted tank, but the tank (which I still have) was a 37 tall. Sucked for plants.
Salt tanks were always one of those "for experts only" things...but I logged into nano-reef.com and got sucked in. When I put my first live rock in and saw .. .AN AIPTASIA! I was so excited!

Since that day I've been hooked, and I still have aiptasia. Bah!

Once I joined BARE (now BAR of course) and discovered the joy of fragging...well, that was it, I'm hooked for life!

V
 
I won a full 29G tank set up in a raffle when I was 10 at a Florida Marine Aquarium Society show that they were having at the Planetarium in Florida. I set it up in my room with a nemo and an anenome and that was all she wrote. Pretty much had a tank ever since including one in my fraternity house in college (an aggressive FO tank with a lionfish, panther grouper and some triggers). Graduated to reefs after college where I used to dive for my own fish using a slurp gun had more of a mixed reef with general LPS and softies. Got the SPS bug about 6 years ago when I was in Texas and the rest is history.
 
[quote author=Vincerama2 link=topic=6047.msg76615#msg76615 date=1232755526]
When I put my first live rock in and saw .. .AN AIPTASIA! I was so excited!
[/quote]

LOL... I remember being excited when I had my first Aiptasia! ...once I figured it out I was so crestfallen... I was like... DAMMIT! ;D
 
[quote author=seminolecpa link=topic=6047.msg76616#msg76616 date=1232755582]
I won a full 29G tank set up in a raffle when I was 10 at a Florida Marine Aquarium Society ............. the rest is history.
[/quote]

This happens so often it seems. I'm surprised fish stores don't give tanks out to anyone that comes in that doesn't have one. They'll make their money back many times over... a recurring revenue model right there ;)
 
Back in '97, saw a puffer fish in an aquarium and immediately fell in love with it. I ran to the salesperson and asked to purchase it. Dude at the counter was like, "Do you have a saltwater aquarium?", and I was like, "Uhm...no". So I ended up using some b-day money to set-up my first aquarium ever, salt or fresh. Over 10 years later, I ditched the fish, and started shooting-up corals <lol>.
 
I took my son (who has autism) to the temp Stienhart on Howard st. He usualy does not do very well in places with crowds and anyone who went there knows it didn't take much to make a crowd. Amazingly he was extremely peaceful and relaxed as long as we were in front of the tanks.

I decicded I had to set up an aquairum at home so he could have the same peace there.

A 20 to a 55 to a 120 and here we are, to this day he loves to sit in front of the tank and just stare at everything going on.
 
[quote author=zambavi link=topic=6047.msg76618#msg76618 date=1232756213]
[quote author=seminolecpa link=topic=6047.msg76616#msg76616 date=1232755582]
I won a full 29G tank set up in a raffle when I was 10 at a Florida Marine Aquarium Society ............. the rest is history.
[/quote]

This happens so often it seems. I'm surprised fish stores don't give tanks out to anyone that comes in that doesn't have one. They'll make their money back many times over... a recurring revenue model right there ;)
[/quote]

My (Rich) step-brother-in-law's daughter won a goldfish at a fair. It snowballed into a 100g acrylic tank...which eventually sat in their garage for many years and is now in my backyard awaiting acrylic scratch removal.

V
 
My addiction started when I was very young. I grew up in southern Cali, and at the end of our street we had a small family owned pet store. The family became friends with our family and I started working (helping) at the age of 7. I had already been keeping what ever I could catch. But once working at the pet store I started to keep more animals. I had everything from lizards, geckos, snakes (which I breed for about 5 years), to a small fresh water tank. I always would look at the salt water tanks in the shop and think one day, one day.

So lets fast forward about 16 years...

I moved to the town of Capitola, CA and just happen to end up only a few hundred yards from the ocean. This re-ignited the fire and I would go out and look off the cliffs to see what the ocean held for that day (sharks, rays, skates, etc). My wife never really was one to keep animals or critters, so I would just dream. Then came along my daughter. She is now at little over 2 1/2 and really wanted a salt water tank. At her age things come in go, but it was chance to have one. So I just jumped right into it. Read up on it for about 3-4 months and here I am. So our living room in now what most friends call the pet store. Salt water tank on one side and 5 gecko breeding cages on the other. The gecko pay for the salt water, store credit. Helps with the purchasing of dry goods.

Thats my story ;D
 
I bought a ten gallon aquarium at a garage sale in grade school for a dollar. I caught livebearers with a cup at a nearby pond. Returning them and catching more. I could see the baby bream and bass just out of reach, so I bought a net. Lesson learned, everything that is just out of reach can more than likely be had with another piece of equipment.

Advanced to tropical fresh in high school, and College was Oscar(and feeder fish) time. Switched to Koi ponds at my folks place nearby for several years, and installed a couple professionally. I found the original supplies list for my dream saltwater set up to include clowns, going through boxes in the move West two years ago. About $200 for a 30g set up was way out of the budget then. Glad I jumped in six months ago.
 
Some great stories so far... I think it's cool to find out how everyone got introduced. Keep the 'HOW YOU GOT ADDICTED' stories coming!
 
In the early 70's my dad had a friend with a yellow tang and a few other fish which led to my need for a fish tank. Back then it was fresh water only for me.

Years later, a friend had a really nice tank with a large bubble coral.

When I took down my SWFO to move to SF, it was time for it to be reborn as a reef. ;) That was over 10 years ago!
 
I didn't get addicted till BAR's DBTC. Something about fragging and propagation hit me like crack. ..speaking of which, I'll get to use my new wet/dry bandsaw on some new DBTC frags this weekend lol
 
I was 10 to when my parents bought a 30gal hex FW tank. We just kept goldfish. Had that tank for a couple of years before parents decieded to get rid of it. I didn't have a tank again until 2yrs ago. My gf got a 15 gal tall hex tank for a gift. I was actually kind of opposed to it. We kept that tank for 6 months before we upped it to a 46gal bow.The more I got involved the more it sucked me in. I had been talking about getting a SW tank for awhile. I finally pulled the trigger in Dec.

So I'm basically pretty new to the whole Aquarium keeping process.
 
For me I have had freshwater on and off while in my "younger days", however the fish store near me... can't recall the name but it was in San Bruno on San Mateo Ave. later on (after I got into the SW hobby) he moved a little further away, then the store went out... mostly because he never showed up and opened the store uber late... hated that store ... but anyways! :D

FW just wasn't appealing that store didn't have much in the way of fish I cared for, however if you turned around behind the FW fish were the SW fish and man they were 100x more colorful than anything in the FW section, and I always asked the owner about how hard it was to keep saltwater fish , and he always responded with "Extremely difficult", now granted the technology back then (this was pre/really early internet days) wasn't quite where it is now but looking back it would not have taken much more effort to keep SW fish than FW fish, corals maybe harder but I don't recall seeing corals back then in his store. He also strung my dad along very well (he's an big impulse buyer...), and sold him a couple dog faced puffer fish for his 55g FW aquarium... yeah needless to say after I heard about that I disliked the guy on a personal level.

Well fast forward to 2003, I was in PetCo doing what most people do in a store, just looking at the pretty fish and stuff then I saw a box of instant ocean salt mix (mixes 10g worth of saltwater) for like $12.99 on sale (cheap huh! ;)). Well I figured what the hell, I still had a 10g glass tank at home from the freshwater days, so I bought the salt mix and a very elementary book on "How to setup a SW tank". From there I read the book front to back, figured I needed a protein skimmer too, so I went to Petsmart and got an airpump powered one, a bag of "bioactive" sand, and mixed up the salt got everything in the tank and like most people I followed really bad advice (I think it said in the book), to cycle with a fish in a tank... so I went to a local aquarium (I was in San Francisco at the time), Hung Ming aquarium on Mission St., bought a blue damsel and a tomato clown because they were both relatively cheap fish, thought about buying an engineer goby, because hey I need something to sift the sand, glad I didn't in retrospect. Tossed them and a piece of plastic drift wood/coral/whatever decore into the 10g tank and I was set!

Of course like all boys, it wasn't big enough and I wanted bigger very shortly after, I was on RC at the time, pre-BAR days later end of BARE days, and people of course said larger tanks are MUCH harder... and like the stubborn person that I am... I went looking for a large tank, now I just finished grad school and was looking for a job, so money was a bit tight, but I found a 135g tank on craigslist for $200 with a stand... uh uh... let the addiction begin. Another local LFS owner, Steve @ Lucky Ocean, helped me out as well, he gave me a ton of corals that were either too beat up to sell or something, and well sure enough the coral addiction started here....

SPS addiction came a bit later, as I was part of BAR, we had our first frag swap outside of Tropical Paradise (bad idea in retrospect...), the next BAR swap was at ASAP and I think I picked up a single piece of Poccilipora in one of the later rounds... well that's all it took there... of course like many impatient people I killed my fair share of SPS that I got originally through a variety of ways, but that Poccilipora is still with me, granted its on the bottom of the tank in a pile of detritus because that's where the current takes it, but I think I'll keep it just for memory sakes.

End result, someone tells me something is hard, I want to try it out for myself to see how hard it is, as I've found that I can do just about anything if I put my mind to it (except play DDR at anything past normal speed, as my feet don't move that fast!). Keep in mind there's a fine line between hard, and stupid because I'm not ready (equipment, chemistry, whatever) and I did skirt it a few times, and few times cross over it, but when someone tells me something is too hard, its like a personal challenge to me.

~Fin
 
I've had freshwater tanks as a little kid, always wanting mollies & guppies to have babies and fill up the tank with fish, but that interested waned as a teenager. However a few years ago I'd peruze into Seascapes in downtown mountain view, just to check things out. I thought a couple of the saltwater tanks there were so cool, and so filled with life (how tastes & standards have changed), that I researched a little on saltwater tanks. Kinda funny how seascapes inspired me and I look back and know now how little I knew then and how those tanks today are completely uninspiring to me. :-[
I saw a 55 gallon reeftank on craigslist, will all required equip and nemos and stuff- $450 later I had my 1st tank. AFter it was setup and I found internet reefkeeping sites, mainly Reefcentral at the time, I saw how much possibility there is with the variety of corals, fishes, etc. and kept on trying to add corals, fish, inverts, to make the 'ocean in a box' the way I like it. At that time I guess I was addicted- addicted with the quest for my opinion of what a perfect reef it, which is of course never attainable, but fun to pursue nonetheless.
 
I have always loved animals and anything to do with the natural world. Unfortunately, my family lived in a condominium (I lobbied for a house, well, actually a farm). I desperately wanted pets. One day at my elementary school carnival, they had a little game where you fished for goldfish with a paper net until it broke. I spent all my money for the fair playing only that game. I eventually came home with about 20 goldfish. They all went into a bucket and within a few days, they all died. Still, my parents didn't get me an aquarium. Money was tight.

I would beg my dad to take me to the streams to catch mosquito fish (wild guppies), and sometimes swordtails and crayfish. I would keep them for a while, then release them back into the stream again. I could spend hours looking at all the animals and fish in a petshop. My family would go shopping at the mall and drop me off at the petshop where I would watch the animals, and especially the fish, interact with each other. I was never bored.

My aunt, who loved fish too, gave me my first 10 gallon tank for Christmas. Then, when I was 11 years old, I got a paper route. Now I had my own money, hurray! My one tank turned into 8 tanks because when the angels started spawning and fighting each other, I of course had to get a tank for each pair. While in High school, I volunteered at the Waikiki Aquarium for a summer. I loved that job. I got to do the fun feedings. This was when I tried my first SW aquarium. My friend and I went to the shore one day on a tidepool collecting mission. We met a fisherman who stuck all the "garbage" fish he caught into a fully enclosed tidepool. There were colorful wrasses, trigger fish, parrot fish, fish he didn't want to eat and was going to throw back in once he was done fishing. We asked if we could take a fish home, and he agreed. I took home a large green and red Christmas wrasse. I eventually released it because it was just too big for the tank. Water was free through the Waikiki Aquarium who pumped it in from off reef for themselves, and as a public service for anyone who needed it. Many SW fish stores still use ocean water today. However, my SW aquarium was a disaster. It had an undergravel filter, which was pretty new technology back then. I knew nothing about cycling or stocking levels, and I had 2 seahorses, a clown, and another fish in a 20 gal high. Plus there was no such thing as PE mysis, or mysis at all in the islands. I remember my seahorses sucking Tetramin out of my fingers, but of course they died, being malnourished. I didn't touch SW again. I was heartbroken and afraid of killing anymore lovely fish.

I kept a few fish in college, but nothing major. I did major in Zoology though, which in hindsight should have been Marine Biology since I am terribly allergic to most animals with fur (except dogs). However, Marine Bio wasn't an option when going to school in the midwest. While home one summer, I volunteered at the Waikiki Aquarium again. I guess I couldn't get fish out of my system. This time, it was even more fun. I not only fed the fish, but the nautilus, cuttlefish, and saltwater crocodile as well. I was asked at the end of summer If I wanted to train the Hawaiian monk seal. I was honored, but sad too, because I had plans to go to gradschool.

Forward about 10 yrs. Got married, had kids. It wasn't until our family moved back to Hawaii that the aquarium bug hit me all over again. Well, I wanted to earlier, but we had a little hobby farm to care for. (Goats to milk, eggs to collect, Greyhounds to rehabilitate and place in homes.)

In Hawaii, I finally got my aquariums again, and started doing some planted tanks. It wasn't until my son's first grade school project on clownfish that I thought it might be possible to try saltwater again. I figured that knowledge and technology had increased dramatically since that first disastrous try. Looking at the websites for information I came across many places selling corals, but live rock and corals are illegal to keep in Hawaii. I guess I filed that info in the back of my head though, because after we moved to CA and saw stores selling corals, I became more intrigued. My first purchase was with IPSF in Hawaii. I figured, why not have a little piece of home? Then I met Jim A. in the petshop, and he pointed me to BAR... :)
 
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