In my location, there is not much of a pet store population. My town has nothing but dog grooming shoppes. To the west we have one store who's owner tells people their fish can drown and uses nothing but nano skimmers on their fluctuating display tanks. To the east we have 26,000sqft of please just shut down your store. The owners work 9-5 m-f and do not allow their employees to sell saltwater....unless it is to me and I handle the livestock. (Used to groom dogs there). To the north we have corn for a few hours...then a freshwater only store. South I have to drive 2hrs to get to the nearest place of which we all know...Premium Aquatics. However their hours are reduced as to not make any non-wholesalers go out of business. The same distance to the southwest is another decent place but has normal hours, however is severely overpriced. Nobody wants to pay $30 for Xenia.
So the lack of Saltwater Stores is not the only thing that comes with living in a farmers dream state. A Lack of saltwater enthusiasts is also an issue that correlates to this problem. Maybe there are not enough stores to encourage more hobbyists? Maybe there aren't enough hobbyists to encourage more stores? Either way, it is very hard to have any local reefer role models. Since my first experience I have solely relied on this website to educate me into a well rounded reefing individual that is the local role model. People come from distances as far and farther just to grab a few frags, have a sump built, or just shoot the (Hey, don't say it)! I'm not one to brag, as you all know from my threads. I try to be humble and accepting to all ideas when possible. Being open minded as takin criticism as help and not insults has always been my ticket to success.
Yeah I started with a stupid idea of an aquarium, and now that I look back on my old tank I really would go back and slap my own face...hard. I didn't quarantine and I sure didn't understand photosynthesis beyond its definition. When I asked for help from the local suppliers they were clueless. Just do a water change, your light is fine. I had a freshwater LED made for a 10g on a 55....sound good enough? No...time for more outsourcing. I happened to go up To Michigan that week and stopped in at MVP pets in portage. Holy cow! What a change! A room packed with every fish on the planet...corals of all shapes and...they come in different colors?!?!? What? I was in shock and to make matters worse they have a whale of a sale every last Wednesday of every month. Buy one get one half off. So that was my first real LFS experience. I took home my first reef light, a Deep Blue 4x54w w/ built in timer. That was he most advanced light I have ever seen at the time. They had LEDs and halides there but they were still newer technology and I was happy spending $200 for my light.
At this point I had a few hitch hiker corals, which was why I was searching for a light in the first place. The next morning when the light came on automatically it made all the corals get so big I almost wet my pants. I was on the way to an awesome (to me) tank.
Back to planet earth: as my corals grew I decided to go more into the design of these systems and figure out if I was even close. At this point I had made a 4ft tall canister filter out of PVC and a crapload of gravel. (Another slap me in the face thing). I soon learned about sumps and all the stuff that goes In them. Of course, diy overflows are not te best so I had some flooding there for a while in the rental shanty. I eventually got a drilled tank with no overflow, just the standpipes.
That was my last learning experience before i started to pre-plan things rather than fill and build as I learn. The tank was cool. Mostly polyps and softies. I had a puffer fish and a lion as well who were really quite good friends. I began to collect rocks and things and eventually had way too much stuff. I wasn't aware Craigslist had anything like this until I accidentally found my next tank.
125 lowboy. I still regret selling that. It was solid oak stand and canopy and I actually spent 2 weeks preparing the upgrade...making sure this was the best it could be. And it was! Then I moved....lost it all to a wad of cash haha.
At that point I was craigslisting corals daily. I met so many people and made a few great new friends from out of town. Eventually i started becoming the go-to guy for everything, mainly advise. This is when I decided to actually go about this like a business.
I set up a frag tank and started going nuts at it. Made so much cash I was able to upgrade all my equipment and have a tank that was reef ready. No more overflows!!
I am still learnin new things all the time. People ask me stuff I have not experienced, like flat worms or how to install something. Heck, try to find a local calcium reactor, I dare you. As people started getting online more and hearing about these wonderful pieces o equipment, I too was experiencing a lot of this stuff for my first time as well, only I have a very fast learning curve that I get from working in sales..you have to know what some thing does or nobody will buy it!!!
Today I can say that I am current with the hip new trends. I know what each piece of equipment on the market can do. I even know the majority of care required by most corals and fish. I can even program a reefKeeper to do anything I need, or don't need
The struggle of a small town reef keeper is not an easy one. I feel all the work I have put into this hobby were worth all the problems I ran into and the hours of weeding through situational evidence of how certain things work and react. I use these experiences now as examples for others and strive to prevent as many people as I can from taking the hard way to the top.
Forums are a tricky one. We got lucky here on R2R, but other places may not be so friendly to those who need help. One thing that people simply won't grasp is the importance of a quarantine system. How many people do you know who doesn't do this? I feel that out of all the problems I ran into,quarantine was the answer to most and I will stay up for days arguing about it if someone wants to try to say they don't need to. Did your live rock come from a tank with fish or corals? How about your sand? Inverts aren't susceptible to things like ich...but they can carry it with them. Inverts are not restricted to things sold individually, they live on rocks and in the sand as well. Ich can be contracted from a cup of sand from a system that has it present. Normally you would set up your tank with rock and sand only to leave it fallow during the cycle...basically this is where the sand and rock are experiencing "quarantine." It sounds silly to quarantine a new rock, but it sounds even more silly to waste a month trying to catch your fish. Other than making sure your livestock is healthy BEFORE it goes in your system, the rest is flexible. Light options, pump options, and stock lists can all be tailored to your needs.
Its not impossible to blossom in a location unaware of the hobby. It takes a lot of motivation and you cannot give up no matter what. Be prepared to drive far and order things online. Get your plans together before you go all out. Learn the importance of quarantine! In a small town with little access to supplies, an outbreak of ich or any other issue can make or break your drive for this hobby.
We don't all live in places swarming with frag swaps, we have nobody to give us an updated critique, we have you...the World Wide Web. Thank you for being there for me this whole time and I am more than happy to help you back. I have never been in a hobby that has had such high class. Reefers are certainly their own breed of people. Some of us are maniacs, some of us are democrats, some of us get payed to use baseball bats outside of sports...but one thing we all have in common is our love and devotion to saltwater aquariums and all the things related to them.
Tell me you know someone who says, "no I do not want to look at your wrasse" and I will gladly show them mine.
So the lack of Saltwater Stores is not the only thing that comes with living in a farmers dream state. A Lack of saltwater enthusiasts is also an issue that correlates to this problem. Maybe there are not enough stores to encourage more hobbyists? Maybe there aren't enough hobbyists to encourage more stores? Either way, it is very hard to have any local reefer role models. Since my first experience I have solely relied on this website to educate me into a well rounded reefing individual that is the local role model. People come from distances as far and farther just to grab a few frags, have a sump built, or just shoot the (Hey, don't say it)! I'm not one to brag, as you all know from my threads. I try to be humble and accepting to all ideas when possible. Being open minded as takin criticism as help and not insults has always been my ticket to success.
Yeah I started with a stupid idea of an aquarium, and now that I look back on my old tank I really would go back and slap my own face...hard. I didn't quarantine and I sure didn't understand photosynthesis beyond its definition. When I asked for help from the local suppliers they were clueless. Just do a water change, your light is fine. I had a freshwater LED made for a 10g on a 55....sound good enough? No...time for more outsourcing. I happened to go up To Michigan that week and stopped in at MVP pets in portage. Holy cow! What a change! A room packed with every fish on the planet...corals of all shapes and...they come in different colors?!?!? What? I was in shock and to make matters worse they have a whale of a sale every last Wednesday of every month. Buy one get one half off. So that was my first real LFS experience. I took home my first reef light, a Deep Blue 4x54w w/ built in timer. That was he most advanced light I have ever seen at the time. They had LEDs and halides there but they were still newer technology and I was happy spending $200 for my light.
At this point I had a few hitch hiker corals, which was why I was searching for a light in the first place. The next morning when the light came on automatically it made all the corals get so big I almost wet my pants. I was on the way to an awesome (to me) tank.
Back to planet earth: as my corals grew I decided to go more into the design of these systems and figure out if I was even close. At this point I had made a 4ft tall canister filter out of PVC and a crapload of gravel. (Another slap me in the face thing). I soon learned about sumps and all the stuff that goes In them. Of course, diy overflows are not te best so I had some flooding there for a while in the rental shanty. I eventually got a drilled tank with no overflow, just the standpipes.
That was my last learning experience before i started to pre-plan things rather than fill and build as I learn. The tank was cool. Mostly polyps and softies. I had a puffer fish and a lion as well who were really quite good friends. I began to collect rocks and things and eventually had way too much stuff. I wasn't aware Craigslist had anything like this until I accidentally found my next tank.
125 lowboy. I still regret selling that. It was solid oak stand and canopy and I actually spent 2 weeks preparing the upgrade...making sure this was the best it could be. And it was! Then I moved....lost it all to a wad of cash haha.
At that point I was craigslisting corals daily. I met so many people and made a few great new friends from out of town. Eventually i started becoming the go-to guy for everything, mainly advise. This is when I decided to actually go about this like a business.
I set up a frag tank and started going nuts at it. Made so much cash I was able to upgrade all my equipment and have a tank that was reef ready. No more overflows!!
I am still learnin new things all the time. People ask me stuff I have not experienced, like flat worms or how to install something. Heck, try to find a local calcium reactor, I dare you. As people started getting online more and hearing about these wonderful pieces o equipment, I too was experiencing a lot of this stuff for my first time as well, only I have a very fast learning curve that I get from working in sales..you have to know what some thing does or nobody will buy it!!!
Today I can say that I am current with the hip new trends. I know what each piece of equipment on the market can do. I even know the majority of care required by most corals and fish. I can even program a reefKeeper to do anything I need, or don't need
The struggle of a small town reef keeper is not an easy one. I feel all the work I have put into this hobby were worth all the problems I ran into and the hours of weeding through situational evidence of how certain things work and react. I use these experiences now as examples for others and strive to prevent as many people as I can from taking the hard way to the top.
Forums are a tricky one. We got lucky here on R2R, but other places may not be so friendly to those who need help. One thing that people simply won't grasp is the importance of a quarantine system. How many people do you know who doesn't do this? I feel that out of all the problems I ran into,quarantine was the answer to most and I will stay up for days arguing about it if someone wants to try to say they don't need to. Did your live rock come from a tank with fish or corals? How about your sand? Inverts aren't susceptible to things like ich...but they can carry it with them. Inverts are not restricted to things sold individually, they live on rocks and in the sand as well. Ich can be contracted from a cup of sand from a system that has it present. Normally you would set up your tank with rock and sand only to leave it fallow during the cycle...basically this is where the sand and rock are experiencing "quarantine." It sounds silly to quarantine a new rock, but it sounds even more silly to waste a month trying to catch your fish. Other than making sure your livestock is healthy BEFORE it goes in your system, the rest is flexible. Light options, pump options, and stock lists can all be tailored to your needs.
Its not impossible to blossom in a location unaware of the hobby. It takes a lot of motivation and you cannot give up no matter what. Be prepared to drive far and order things online. Get your plans together before you go all out. Learn the importance of quarantine! In a small town with little access to supplies, an outbreak of ich or any other issue can make or break your drive for this hobby.
We don't all live in places swarming with frag swaps, we have nobody to give us an updated critique, we have you...the World Wide Web. Thank you for being there for me this whole time and I am more than happy to help you back. I have never been in a hobby that has had such high class. Reefers are certainly their own breed of people. Some of us are maniacs, some of us are democrats, some of us get payed to use baseball bats outside of sports...but one thing we all have in common is our love and devotion to saltwater aquariums and all the things related to them.
Tell me you know someone who says, "no I do not want to look at your wrasse" and I will gladly show them mine.
