Longtime Lurker Finally Joining R2R

Fish Think Pink · Apr 13, 2021

BostonReefer300 said:
Hi Everyone,
I've been keeping a reef tank in various iterations for almost 10 years and have benefitted greatly from information on this site. I finally decided to officially join R2R and start asking questions directly and, occasionally, giving hard-learned advice that will hopefully be helpful. I have a Ph.D. in chemistry and I use my science background to help me navigate this complex hobby---although I occasionally do irrational things with my tank regardless. We can’t all be like Randy Holmes-Farley all the time!

I started reefing when my then five year old daughter wrote up a list (in crayon) of all the reasons she deserved a clownfish. After that cute scene, there was no way my wife could keep saying no to my lifelong dream of a reef tank! My daughter and I started with a 40-gallon tank and collection of cheap stuff from PetSmart plus a how-to book we ordered from Amazon. She predictably lost interest after a few months, while I became increasingly obsessed with it. You know you’re in trouble when you decide it’s a good idea to make DIY 40-gallon multi-compartment sump for a 40-gallon DT.

Anyway, I graduated up to larger and larger tanks and am now on a 300-gallon that I’ve had for five years. I ended up largely neglecting it for a couple years because life just got too crazy. It became overrun with softies (Xenia and GSP suck!) and I became embarrassed to show it to anyone. Well, I decided to recommit to the hobby a couple months ago and did as much of a re-do as I could. Put all the fish, crabs, and several desirable coral frags in my QT and then custom-cooked almost all my rock and put the tank in fallow-dark mode for weeks. It’s all put back together now with a bunch of improvements. I’ll post pics and a full description in the tank build thread soon.

Thanks for reading my note and I look forward to being an active member of the R2R community!

Welcome!

So glad you joined! Looking forward to seeing your build thread, too