What got you into reef keeping

[symon_say]

A Pic of a mandarin goby.

 

[JeepTj]

finding nemo/dory

 

[fish farmer]

I became fascinated with sharks and fish in general at a young age. A friend of the family who was a science teacher was the fish geek, that got me into fishing and fish/critter keeping.

He gave me several metal rimmed tanks and 60's era booklets on fishkeeping around 1980, when I was 11 years old. I had a pirahna tank first and next tank was a 20 gallon SW he helped me setup. I played with that for a couple years. I then converted most every tank I had(about 4 or 5 tanks) into FW and kept tropical and local FW fish until around college when I tried the 20 gal SW again which I killed off in a semester. My final year of college I figured it out and had a DIY trickle filter on a 38 gallon FOWLR, even though it didn't officially have true live rock, I added some local Rhode Island stones which seeded the tank with pods and algae.

Once I graduated with my Bachelor's in Aquaculture and Fisheries the tank got taken down and I moved onto professional care of fishes. I had a couple of brief FW setups at various jobs sites.

Fast forward to 2000, where I had been settled for several years and making money. I happened to check out a few pets stores in the area and noticed that reefkeeping had advanced since the early 90's. I bought a few magazines with reef articles, I had Albert Thiel's book in my library, plus other marine books and my old 38 gal with trickle filter. I poured through the articles, found online sources of info like reefs.org and stayed up many nights worrying about the money and time commitment that a reef would entail.

I'm still here....and still keeping those dang green striped mushrooms and brown palys alive since 2000.

 

[cracker]

Pretty much a life long interest of swimming critters . Then later of course, the coral bug bit me so here I am. A good 40 plus years.