Old School Tank Thread

[Lowell Lemon]

Yes everything in the tank was reel, the bio balls where a recent upgrade from a roll of polyester padding that the wet dry came with and they where supposedly the greatest invention ever for our wet dry filters.. lol. The picture was taken right as my tank was coming into its own after years of struggling with supper high nutrient levels and not enough lighting, the tank was a morph from a fish/invert tank that I set up in the early 80's to a reef in 85 starting with the addition of 80+ pounds of fresh harvested rock from Fiji and Hawaii, It went right into my tank uncured and uncleaned right on top of the original rock substrate complete with air driven under gravel filter :) after Setting up my wet dry and completing the cycle I promptly headed to my LFS to purchase the only reel live coral that I had ever seen a Goniopora :) needless to say it didn't last long or did the replacements purchased afterwards.. Even though I had a huge bio filter in place the tank was still being illuminated with the original single bulb glass hood fixture that came with the tank and of course I had no idea lighting was so critical.. Over the next couple years some LPS became available mostly hammer and bubble but I still had very little to no success even though I had added another light fixture complete with a plant grow bulb that I was sure was going to be the magic bullet for coral growth but in the end it just helped turn my tank into a swamp.. lol. It wasn't until John B figured out that the Philip 03 bulbs coming from holland where the ticket for coral survivability that I decided to completely redo my tank pulling out the under gravel filter and substrate, built a light fixture that would hold 5-48" fluorescent tubes 60/40 actinic, added bio balls to the wet dry and installed 2 skimmers one a home built venturi and the other a huge 5' tall ozone injected countercurrent that came from a public aquarium.. lol. From that point I was keeping most everything alive and a lot of softy's started becoming available which did great in my system but I still had little growth from my LPS until I started using kalkwasser as my top off water, it dramatically changed my tank.. All the nuisance algae disappeared, coralline algae started encrusting everything, and most of my LPS started growing like crazy laying down inches of skeleton over the years, the elegance in my avatar was the size of my fist when I purchased it and almost the size of a football when I sold it years later.. The best pic's of the tank are from the mid 90's if I can ever find them, the back wall was solid purple including the overflow and power heads and the bulk of my corals where fat and happy, I used rubber bands to "pinch" off pieces of leather and shrooms which I tied to small rocks a early form of fragging:)

Good old John B. Burleson I presume. I remember when Julian worked for John. We never met in person but spent lots of time on the phone. Now I have to go digging in the 35mm films.

 

[Cichlid Dad]

I'll start with a couple from the web

I know this is a very old thread, question, the dinner plate green coral to the left bottom pic. Is it a cup coral? Asking because it looks like mine. Just hoping when it grows up it will look like that.

 

[underseahabitats]

My father owned Undersea Habitats in vanuys ca in the early 80's we made and sent custom saltwater systems and decorated tanks all ove rthe world. sadly i have no pics of our tanks after he passed away. do any of you remember undersea habitats or Dick Nowlins articles in fama? would love to see any pictures of surviving tanks!

 

[IPT]

Man, I have a few! I had posted a couple on my build thread (which needs badly to be updated :)).

What a trip! Martin Moe had a book about Slatwater or reeftanks. it was like the only source of info. I remember making a 3ft tall protein skimmer with 3" PVC pipe, Tupperware containers and wooden airstones! Heck, I even had a laundry basket filled with bioballs as DIY Trickle filter :).

Believe it or not, I still have coral from that tank! As it would be it's a palythoa grandis. I a can assure you I knew nothing of the dangers back then, of course I wasn't fragging back then either. i still have it today and I (carefully and with protection) do frag it.

Anyway, you wanted pictures. i don't have too many. This is either a 30 gallon I think, from 1997. Check out the clam! It got big, and of course I had no idea what I was doing. Maybe Kalk? Maybe just water changes? Certainly no 2 part or dosers...times have changed!

 

[IPT]

I moved furniture out of my bedroom to fit more tanks. My room wasn't big, yet I had a 50 gallon, 75 gallon, and two or three 10-20 gallons.

Heres a 75 planted tank and of course back then what cool person wouldn't have some red-bellied pirranahs :)

 

[mcarroll]

This is all so fascinating to me. And all this with no internet and a very small community to feed from. I'm sure information came at a snails pace and any new tech was just like the real world tech.. Pretty much useless by today's standards but a necessary steppingstone to get to today's.. Like that fancy blue thing on the front.. (Did it have a cool word like ozone in the name?) probably set you back a ton and really does what? ;) no arguments over what type of skimmer is better.. A SKIMMER is better :p thank you so much for sharing and for sure share more if you can find them! It's amazing how to reefers like us one still picture from the late 80's can lead to 1000 questions

Once the actinic bulbs and kalkwasser came into the picture, things really started to crystalize – so not useless at all.

...or at least no more useless than half the crud people put on their tanks these days. 2026 feels more like a return to Hi-Tech reefs of 80's to me than it feels like progress from the 90's and 00's. Regressive is the word I'm wanting to use.

The arrival of "The Berlin Method" was the true beginning of the hobby we enjoy today if you ask me.

EDIT: Sorry for no pics....lost all my photos from the 2000's in a HD crash. Very sad as I blogged daily on my home server including pics, notes and test results. Maybe my server shouldn't have been in the room with the tank... ;)