Hi, everyone! I recently (three or four months ago) got back into the hobby after a 15 year hiatus. Of course, me being me and the hobby being what it is, one tank quickly turned into two and then into three and then convincing the wifey that we can add more and her saying no and me hiding craigslist and sales tanks in the basement...
My story is not unique -- I know this. However, this is my first foray into reef keeping on my own. Way back when, I had a roommate that worked at an LFS. That was my in. We had six display tanks in the house, all but one were FOWLR. The lone reef tank was his and his alone; I was not allowed to touch it. At the time, that was fine by me. Starting up this time around, mixed reef tanks are my goal.
We started off with an old 55 gallon tank that was sitting in storage at the in-laws' house. It had some ups and downs. I lost a couple of cardinals to a parasite, had lights crap out on me, added corals sooner than I should have...
Soon enough, the tank was doing well. I added a few more fish, had a couple of clowns that just wouldn't play nice and was working on maintaining some stability in the tank while I shopped around for a good light fixture for it.
This was after everything was moved from the leaking tank. I also added a bigger light fixture to it in the interim.
Since that one was doing so well, I figured it was time to start looking for tank number two. I found a 26 gallon bow front on craigslist for cheap and it came with a metric ton of extra goodies. At the same time, I found some amazing rock locally for dirt cheap and was more than enough to populate the tank. I splurged a bit on some lighting and got an SB Sbox 18" wifi extreme to put over the top of it planning to eventually throw all the coral my heart desired into the tank.
Right about the time the tank was looking awesome --the fish were happy, parameters were stable, a ricordea mushroom was doing great, I was even getting some spots of purple coralline growing on some of the rocks -- it sprung a leak.
After some severe pouting and a pity party, I moved everything over into the bigger tank and drained it to reseal it. It has since cured and that brings us to where we are now: a rock tank!
Today, I'm waiting on my sand and protein skimmer to arrive and then decide which rocks and fish to take out of the 55 and put back into the 26. I'm going a little more shallow on the sand bed and I'm going to keep a good bit of the rock in the bigger tank. The fish may stay as well, depending on how hard they are to catch, which means I may basically be starting from scratch with livestock, so I figured I'm in the right place for ideas and suggestions.
Sorry for the wall of text. I figured I would squeeze in an introduction while doing a build thread. I hope you guys enjoy following this a fraction as much as I have building it.
My story is not unique -- I know this. However, this is my first foray into reef keeping on my own. Way back when, I had a roommate that worked at an LFS. That was my in. We had six display tanks in the house, all but one were FOWLR. The lone reef tank was his and his alone; I was not allowed to touch it. At the time, that was fine by me. Starting up this time around, mixed reef tanks are my goal.
We started off with an old 55 gallon tank that was sitting in storage at the in-laws' house. It had some ups and downs. I lost a couple of cardinals to a parasite, had lights crap out on me, added corals sooner than I should have...
Soon enough, the tank was doing well. I added a few more fish, had a couple of clowns that just wouldn't play nice and was working on maintaining some stability in the tank while I shopped around for a good light fixture for it.
This was after everything was moved from the leaking tank. I also added a bigger light fixture to it in the interim.
Since that one was doing so well, I figured it was time to start looking for tank number two. I found a 26 gallon bow front on craigslist for cheap and it came with a metric ton of extra goodies. At the same time, I found some amazing rock locally for dirt cheap and was more than enough to populate the tank. I splurged a bit on some lighting and got an SB Sbox 18" wifi extreme to put over the top of it planning to eventually throw all the coral my heart desired into the tank.
Right about the time the tank was looking awesome --the fish were happy, parameters were stable, a ricordea mushroom was doing great, I was even getting some spots of purple coralline growing on some of the rocks -- it sprung a leak.
After some severe pouting and a pity party, I moved everything over into the bigger tank and drained it to reseal it. It has since cured and that brings us to where we are now: a rock tank!
Today, I'm waiting on my sand and protein skimmer to arrive and then decide which rocks and fish to take out of the 55 and put back into the 26. I'm going a little more shallow on the sand bed and I'm going to keep a good bit of the rock in the bigger tank. The fish may stay as well, depending on how hard they are to catch, which means I may basically be starting from scratch with livestock, so I figured I'm in the right place for ideas and suggestions.
Sorry for the wall of text. I figured I would squeeze in an introduction while doing a build thread. I hope you guys enjoy following this a fraction as much as I have building it.
