Tenny
Guest
So I've been sucked back into the hobby again. My name is Drew and I'm an addict. I've been in and out of the aquarium hobby since I was a young kid. I grew up with with plenty of freshwater fish, from community tanks to a large mouth bass tank. I took my first leap into the salt water addiction back in the early 2000's I bought a 20g aquarium already setup in SF. With no idea what I was doing I threw myself head first into the hobby. The first night I had the aquarium I was using tap water and mixing the salt. Didn't even know that the temperature affected the salinity. Some how... everything survived. The tank was a reef and very basic. It had a couple maroon clowns, psychedelic mandarin, damsel (developed my hatred towards damsel from this guy), and a few corals (kenyan tree, and mushrooms... lots of mushrooms).
I eventually moved up to a 90g system, but I had to move so I tore that down just after setting it up. Went to a 29g cube. At the time I was much more into my other addictions [hobbies] and one of them was Jeeps (now days the Jeep, the sport car, the motorcycle all just sit around). I was out of town 2 weekends a month in the sierra's. During one of the 4 day ones, my tank crashed. The power strip was unplugged by my roommates cat and I came home to everything dead. Roommate mentioned "I was wondering why the lights didn't come on..."
That was where I called it quits (2005ish).
Recently I've been just watching them more and more on CL. I went to a friends house (who I inspired to get into the reef system years ago), and saw his beautiful tank and realized my planted f/w tank wasn't doing it for me. Picked up a 30g rimless setup from someone off CL. Came with a Kessil 150, 1/10 chiller, and all the things needed to continue. I borrowed my friends test kits and have been monitoring the water and thankfully it didn't need to cycle again. It came with a few fish (clowns / royal grammar ) and corals ( frogspawn, palys, and plate).
My better half has plunged into the hobby as well. Last week she went to get her hair done, and I get a text "There's a fish store 4 miles from where I am getting my hair done, I'm stopping by after". Thankfully it ended up being AquaExotic and so I knew the quality of livestock and advice would be good thanks to Denzil suggesting it as one of the stores to check out (bought some water jugs off him). She came back with 3 frags and it's satisfying her need. Although apparently there's a list of the "next fish" we get...
The tank is already pretty full, our frag tree is fuller now with the additions of Keith's coral farm. Just the RBTA is too large... wish it would split.
I guess the only reasonable thing to do is buy a bigger tank?
Anyways a few pictures of the setup:
http://goo.gl/7Ses1
http://goo.gl/4F20x
http://goo.gl/3EpJa
I eventually moved up to a 90g system, but I had to move so I tore that down just after setting it up. Went to a 29g cube. At the time I was much more into my other addictions [hobbies] and one of them was Jeeps (now days the Jeep, the sport car, the motorcycle all just sit around). I was out of town 2 weekends a month in the sierra's. During one of the 4 day ones, my tank crashed. The power strip was unplugged by my roommates cat and I came home to everything dead. Roommate mentioned "I was wondering why the lights didn't come on..."
That was where I called it quits (2005ish).
Recently I've been just watching them more and more on CL. I went to a friends house (who I inspired to get into the reef system years ago), and saw his beautiful tank and realized my planted f/w tank wasn't doing it for me. Picked up a 30g rimless setup from someone off CL. Came with a Kessil 150, 1/10 chiller, and all the things needed to continue. I borrowed my friends test kits and have been monitoring the water and thankfully it didn't need to cycle again. It came with a few fish (clowns / royal grammar ) and corals ( frogspawn, palys, and plate).
My better half has plunged into the hobby as well. Last week she went to get her hair done, and I get a text "There's a fish store 4 miles from where I am getting my hair done, I'm stopping by after". Thankfully it ended up being AquaExotic and so I knew the quality of livestock and advice would be good thanks to Denzil suggesting it as one of the stores to check out (bought some water jugs off him). She came back with 3 frags and it's satisfying her need. Although apparently there's a list of the "next fish" we get...
The tank is already pretty full, our frag tree is fuller now with the additions of Keith's coral farm. Just the RBTA is too large... wish it would split.
I guess the only reasonable thing to do is buy a bigger tank?
Anyways a few pictures of the setup:
http://goo.gl/7Ses1
http://goo.gl/4F20x
http://goo.gl/3EpJa
