SC #7: The goal of your tank

For me it was in the mid 80's I just bought a used 30 gallon and I wanted to try discus. Wow, i was so impressionable back then. And the guy at shop talked me out of it. He was telling me how hard they were to keep and how touchy of a fish they were for the price. He then recommended Salt Water, stated the fish were hardier. Been keeping SW ever since then.

What keeps me going, I guess it the personality of the tanks that keep me going. Even though Recently my 75 plexi cracked and I had to tear down everything, I do plan on getting a new one by fall and starting everything right again. Planning on having a sump and fuge along with it.

For me it was seeing a co-workers awsome 500 gallon reef setup. He had a 2 foot long moray eel in there and it was the coolest thing I ever saw. This was about 5 years ago. I got my first tank about 3 years ago and eventually had to sell it and i dot my new tank about 3 months ago. The itch never goes away.

My first saltwater started as a poorly thought out idea, to breed scats. Set up a 55, filled it with free filtered seawater from a tap at Scripps, got a collecting permit to get some local eelgrass and rock. Thinking back, it was my first experience with live rock, a deep sand bed and hitchhikers, back in 1984 before they were called that. Everything lived just fine, the scats grew like weeds, but the tank was obviously too small and I hadn't given much thought to how to rear the larvae even if the scats spawned.

About the same time, the 110 with my beautiful collection of haplochromis crashed when I was out of town. Massive bummer, but I decided to set it up asa SW tank. Had the state of the art UG filter and an HOB filter. Moved some of the hitchhikers in there, like a small majid crab, a kelpfish and a navanax, and bought a niger trigger as well. Amazingly, the trigger never bothered anyone. Left the tank with a friend when I left for school.

My wife talked me into starting back into SW. It was only supposed to be a 20 FO with a few clowns and shrimp. Now it's a 90 reef that is getting packed with corals, plus a nano.

What keeps me going is the combination of the tinkering and designing, the fun of watching small corals grow into big ones, and all the different kinds of life you can just sit and watch in the living room. It's so much fun. Especially now that the algae bloom from hell is over.

I enjoy learning about the hobby for my brithday 2years ago my girlfriend convinced my mom and bestfriend to go in on buying me a saltwater tank. It was suppose to be for an octopus but when I set it up with live rock it looked to nice not to have corals in it. I jumped into it fast, never lost a fish though.

I keep going becuase my friends and others eat it up. They love it, I think there needs to be people who actually care for fish and know about them. If people based their idea of how to care for fish on how fish stores do it, this hobby would be a mess. If someone would want to start a tank based on how my tank looked all the money/time/care that went into it would be worth it.

So I guess I'm a nerd when it comes to equipment, lights, fish, coral and soon to be SPS/Clam... octo obsessed.

sigh.

Intertidal Coldwater Tank Dream

I'm about where Morgunda began. I am just starting to dabble with saltwater, and have officially scrapped marine coldwater torture chamber number one! My ultimate goal is to have a fully functional cold/temperate intertidal tank that features beasties from "below the splash zone" zone down into the subtidal.

I've got this dream/wondering of a tall tank for the purpose, with the lower 1/3 or so never fully drained.

I want to have natural-seeming rockery with pool areas for "low" tide. I'd really like to have a Pacific green anemone as a feature-creature.

Am also trying to work a website (listed below) to develop toward this (I think) fascinating realm of marine life. There are some really cool sea creatures in my area of the world (Oregon and Washington Coastline).

I think my biggest challenge is how to work on a timer-based water pumping system to get the whole thing started on a regular "tidal cycle."

Blame Blinky.

I had a 25g that wasn't dong much. I didn't want another planted tank, I was thinking shellies or killifish but Blinky, good buddy, set up a nano reef and I thought, hey...
So, here I am. Nothing in it but a few hermits and a feather duster right now.

well Im not completely into saltwater as its really in the works.

However, Ive been keeping FW for 10 years now...have had a max of (at one time) 6 tanks all differently populated.

One of my good friends has 4 large SW tanks (ranging from a 90gal snowflake eel WLR tank to a huge 180gal full reef tank). Thats what made me think "why not" Ive also recently helped a friend setup a FOWLR nano and seeing as he (with NO prior aquarium experience) can keep it stable I figured I would dip into the water and start a reef tank . Ive always loved oddballs and watching interactions between the fish and SW tanks always amaze me with SOOO much life in them.

I may ask a few n00b questions within the next month or so so bear with me

Sean

Fish-Head Aric said:

I'm about where Morgunda began. I am just starting to dabble with saltwater, and have officially scrapped marine coldwater torture chamber number one!
I want to have natural-seeming rockery with pool areas for "low" tide. I'd really like to have a Pacific green anemone as a feature-creature.

Click to expand...

Ahhh, no more torture, good for you Aric! Do visit the Seattle Aquarium, we saw some nifty set ups there, they have an outdoor salmon ladder/run set up linked from Peugot sound up into a closed tidal pool area... right down your alley. You will love this.

New here to the site..love it so far.
About ten years ago I had A roommate with a 125 oscars, very cool. He suggested I get a tank, and to get the biggest one I could afford (90 gal.) About 5 tanks later (salt and reef) I'm still passonate about it. Its because of the diversity, and awesome beauty of the creatures.