What is a moment or memory you will never forget with your reef tank

[Pistondog]

Finding a fish i thought was dead.
Story, moved a piece of rock from tank a to tank b.
3 days later started missing my tailspot blenny from tank a.
4 days later spotted him in tank b, hitchhiked over with the rock.

 

[Graemesreef]

When my AGA 220 blew out the bottom.

 

[i cant think]

For my nano, it’s got to be my first time buying SPS colonies in… Well, years. I love colonies and frags but if I’m honest, nothing beats a tank with 1-2 colonies. Drags are nice it just feels empty and they often just die off for whatever reason. Colonies bring everything together and I’d rather have 2-3 large colonies of the same coral over 40-50 frags of different corals. Yes I do still plan to throw frags into the mix but Colonies just aren’t something to ignore.

And for my 4’ tank it has to be when I got my dream fish. All my fish are brutes and I love each one individually but there’s 4-5 that just make the tank a reef. My Reef Safe with Caution fish! Without these guys it wouldn’t feel like a natural ecosystem. And my CBB is now 3-4 years on with me. So my reef now feels complete (with fish Atleast) with 4-5 RSWC fish

 

[Salty_Northerner]

I've got a new one as of today. I have a smart network power bar hooked up through Google home and our cell phones.

We have 2 sockets in the app that we turn on and off when feeding. One is the main pump, heater and ATO. Other is for the skimmer. The heater is a safety thing.

Well I'm gone for 4 days and I come home tonight and walked by the DT on my way to get cleaned up and thought the tank looked odd, fish not being themselves and Coral not out like normal. Here my wife went to feed the fish and corals this morning and forgot to power on everything.

I come out and sat down and looked at the tank.. I'm tired and thought I'd just do some tests in the morning. Well I looked from afar and asked my wife, did you power up everything today and she paused and looked and said OMG no I forgot! I asked her to grab her cell and flip it all back on. I have a Cobalt heater and noticed the LEDs were ramping up from the blue zone to my set 78f temp.. all I could do was just face palm myself lol.. anyways crisis aborted and 30 minutes after the pumps and heater cam back online everything looked way better.

 

[Salty_Northerner]

It's funny because I bought a cam for the tank so I can check on things when on the road. My wife didn't like the idea and figured I'd be spying on her lol.. I'm like no, I want to check the tank at times.. well now she's welcomed the idea of me hooking it up in the morning so this don't happen again.

 

[A Young Reefer]

I will never forget my first time going to the fish store with my dad. I was mind blown by all the fish and crazy inverts. Imagine seeing a flame scallop making a “lightning spark” for the first time. I will surely miss my trips to the lfs with my dad, however I am enjoying them while I can.

 

[MECOMI]

I feel like we all have that special memory with our tanks. Maybe it is the day we finally got to put water into our tank, maybe it is how fish interacted with each other, or maybe it is the day we upgraded our tank to something bigger and better. I am wondering, what is a moment or memory you will never forget with your reef tank!!

It has to be my Yellow Watchman Goby Doc! The Biocube is my first reef ever. I thought the coral would be tough but due to some kind of 'new tank syndrome' and newbie mistakes i had a lot of fish death which was devastating. Doc was one of these early fish, survived ich, survived my mistakes, and was alone in the tank for nearly 3 months. Doc was my first survivor and i appreciated him more every day.

Always watching...

Later days,

B-Kind

 

[Probiesmasher]

My first aptaisia

I remember being so excited with my first aptasia, I finally had something thriving in my tank! Buddy told me to get rid of it asap and I didn't listen. I have become aptasia.

 

[ReefEco]

20 years ago just out of college when I made my first sump from acrylic, I woke up one night because I couldn't sleep (I'm a bit of an insomniac). I went downstairs and was checking out the tank at night with a red light, as I sometimes do. It was about 2:30am if I remember. At that very moment when I was checking the tank, the corner seam on the sump below gave out and started leaking. I can't even tell you how lucky I felt that I just happened to wake up and go down stairs at that moment. It was still a panic and cleanup, but I can't image what it would have ended up like if I hadn't been there right at that moment. I pray to the reef gods now, religiously : )

 

[WestMI-Reefer]

The first time I saw a bristleworm in my tank. It freaked me out so bad lol

 

[Acroconut]

Walking past my tank in the morning with my running shoes in hand and my older Chevron Tang starts to display all those vibrant blue stripes. I mean it really thought that my shoes were a threat to it's territory. Most electric I ever saw this fish look. I was amazed.

 

[Blue Spot Octopus]

For me back in 03 I was hating on my job of 20 years, the 8 hours plus 4 hours of commuting had finally gotten to me, sometimes I would leave at 5 am and get home at midnight.
So my wife seeing my misery asked me to get back into the hobby, everything changed from the 80's and I really did not have any money. So I resisted I knew how I can get to much into it and it can become a burden ( it has )
So I relented and got back in, it helped calm my nerves. I went in cheap, only finding on line sites much later, computers in 06.
For me I had to learn to live with a positive attitude. I learned that they could do nothing to me, only my career, never me. My happiness was in the moment, I learned to enjoy it.

 

[Joj]

Back in the early days when I got my first powder blue tang (a dream fish of mines at that time) I was so ecstatic about it being a real and not a dream.

 

[littlefoxx]

I feel like we all have that special memory with our tanks. Maybe it is the day we finally got to put water into our tank, maybe it is how fish interacted with each other, or maybe it is the day we upgraded our tank to something bigger and better. I am wondering, what is a moment or memory you will never forget with your reef tank!!

Positives: adding Nala my lionfish to may tank for the first time. Always wanted one but always heard they were too hard for beginners and hard to feed so I didnt go for it. I walked into my LFS one day and this itty bitty little baby dwarf lion was there. She was literally the size of a quarter plus her fins. Fell in love with her and took her home. One of my favorite fish and shes grown so much!!!

I got my engineer goby when she was probably 2 cm long. I named her Squirt. She was in the tank when I got velvet, and my only survivor along with my firefish. She was so small I thought I was going to lose her. But she made a recovery and now is about 11 inches long and I now refer to her as my Big Squirt!

Negative: Waking up Saturday morning to all my fish dying in my 125 from an electrical malfunction and realizing they were ALL gone

Added pictures of my lion Nala from when I first got her to now! Shes grown so much.

Squirt is hard to get a picture of, she just likes to poke her head out of her hole!