Hey All,
Been on the forum for a little over a year now but have not been that much involved. I just recently got married and purchased my first home with my wife in Centerville. Now the fun begins! - that I actually have a permanent residence and the possibily of building out a fish room (still have to convince my better half on this
).
My father had a 90g mixed reef as I was growing up and I always loved the tank. Was more vibrant and fascinating then my 20g freshwater tank in my room. I really was never interested enough to learn all the ins and outs of the hobby until I graduated from college and got my first big boy job. Then I could actually afford a decent setup. Started with a 60 cube and had it for almost one year:
The 60g cube was a great starter/learning tank for me. Figuring out what worked, what didn't, and how to combat nuisances like cyano. I tried a couple sps and they were fine until I decided it would be wise to turn my LED up to 100‰... Learned my par lesson there. Ended up burning the tips of the corals and ultimately STN'd and turned to algae.
My second tank, the 75g rimless with shadow overflow, I put into my parents newly gutted out and remodeled place. It was cool that my father and I could finally get together after all those years and talk reef tanks together. We went back and forth on the design, overflow pvc piping runs, what methods to use such as an algae scrubber or two part vs calcium reactor. We ran the bean animal overflow through the wall to a small fish tank room which was just barely big enough to walk into, with the sump tank taking most of the floorspace. The lesson I learned on this tank was picking the right salt mix for ones needs and always test test test your params! I ended up using red sea reef pro mix, which has insanely high alk, paired with running kalkwasser and two-part - my sand bed turned into hard rock...
Sadly, I ended up moving to Dayton, to be with my then girlfriend and the tank had to come down. I sold off most off the big coral and big fish pretty heartbreaking, but when the others didn't sell it gave me an excuse to get a nano tank for my apartment!
The IM Fusion 25g lagoon tank! This is my current tank and it really is the culmination of everything that I have learned so far with all my top end gadgets I've kept from previous tanks (Apex classic, DOS, Kessil A360, tunzee osmilator). The lagoon is very special to me, there is just something right about it with the all-in-one, not too much hassle, and hey! a water change is only one 5 gallon bucket. Just very little maintenance and much pleasing. Now my real issue is corals are starting to grow into each other... guess that's not the worst issue to have... time to upgrade!
These pics are a few months old but not much has changed since:
Thanks for listening to my story
-Slatts