how did you get started?
About 3 yrs ago my neighbors were moving and had a lot of stuff they didn’t want or couldn’t take with them, being cool people they let us pick through some stuff that we wanted and at the time they knew my wife was an avid freshwater fish hobbyist. Since they had an empty 75 gallon acrylic tank, a 12 gallon nano mixed reef complete with a nemo fish (that I have since learned was an ocellaris clown) another empty 28 gallon bowfront tank with stand and a couple power compact lights and a skimmer ( aqua c remora) they were donated to my wife. Her being the fish guru of the house ( at the time anyway) gladly took everything and wanted to ditch the livestock out of the nano tank, me being the jealous left out husband began to reason like a child…but you have your tanks and I dont have anything… Well it worked and I eventuallt set up the 28 gallon bowfront threw on the coralife 65 w pc’s and skimmer, transferred the livestock and rock from the nano, If only I knew what I was getting into…
shortly after I began researching and found out about all the creepy crawlies in my tank (bristle worms, medusa worms, pods etc. I found out that those little furry looking button things growing all over the rocks were zoas, and the green bushy stuff that was taking over a nice piece of branching rock was green star polyps, and the little thing that looked like a tree but shrunk down and got hard when bothered was a kenya tree coral.
This went on for about a month or 2 and guess what?? Remember that empty 75 gallon acrylic? You guessed it, time for an upgrade.
This is when I really discovered how addicting (and expensive) this hobby is. I remembered someone saying that a pound maybe pound and a half of rock per gallon is considered good for a reef tank, definitely gonna need more than the 20 lbs that came from the neighbors, and those 65 watt pc lights gonna have to upgrade those too, so whats this about MH lights…YIKES!! Those things are a little pricey…The wife is definitely gonna regret letting me keep that tank.:) Anyway to make a long story short over the next couple years the cycle continues with me being like a sponge and soaking up as much info as possible, which leads us to the present, I am now the proud slave of a 110 gallon mixed reef complete with all the trimmings. Even though I may have less money than before I was an addict I am definitely a lot richer….
This is pretty much how I was thrust into this hobby by the neighbors and jealousy, now lets hear how you got your start..
Excerpt from:
how did you get started?