amygetsalife
Active Member
I introduced myself and my hubby at the beginning of 2022, but never started a build thread. I'm usually on my phone when I come to R2R and I was not about to try to write this on the phone. If you want to get straight to tank stuff, skip the next 3 paragraphs of back story.
The title? Maybe a bit of hyperbole, but I was asked last year, "What do you and your husband talk about besides the kids and the business?" We have 3 fabulous kids and my husband works under me in our small business that (sometimes barely) supports the family. My answer? Uhhh......I really didn't have one. It was kindly suggested that we do something about that! We had been tuning each other out after work, each doing our own thing unless we were doing stuff with the kids. There were times we did stuff without the kids, but they were far from a "date night." Usually business related.
Scrolling though Instagram, I came across someone in my industry who also was also a marine biologist and she would sometimes share pictures of her reef tank. I found it fascinating and since Eric and I had talked about doing a reef tank many years ago, I brought the idea up to him. We always thought we'd have to wait until we had more money to spare, but a divorce is plenty expensive too!
When viewing it as a form of couples therapy, it seemed like something to try. Not that I'm recommending a tank as a replacement for therapy, but I couldn't really get him to commit to therapy. We've been married 28 years by that time, and for most of it, we've been best friends and very close. But the last 10 years have been hard. Throw in covid at a small public facing business too and you just need to invest in something to keep the sanity and the love alive.
I love to do research, Eric doesn't. So I did a lot of the reading and we'd talk about what I learned. We found that we each had interests in the hobby. He was the gear head, I was the caretaker. We started watching various youtube videos together, much to the kids' dismay.
After getting a nice stimulus check, we decided to put part of it towards our reef tank idea.
November 2021 Black Friday, we ordered a JBJ 65g all in one, got 2 Kessil A180 Tuna Blue lights and controller, and a bunch of other equipment from our local fish store/pet store. That store is dangerously close to our business! However, we already knew that we wouldn't likely buy much in the way of fish or corals there as the tanks were nasty. Lots of algae, aptasia, and usually a dead fish or two. The people were great, but if I wanted to bring home hitchhikers, I wanted to be a little surprised by what I was getting. We found this to be true of two other shops about an hour away. This led us to feel the need to quarantine both fish and inverts.
We set up 2 QT tanks, 10g each. Bought a RODI unit from BRS, tubing and such mostly from the local LFS or hardware store, Brut trash cans, etc and hubby was in hog heaven. Or at least reefer heaven. He started making water, then salt water using Tropic Marin Pro reef....thankfully, we did not have any issues with it as this was during that snafu with the Turkey salt.
I focused on the aquascape. Used liferock and their shapes. I think that's what it was. Painted purple stuff. Looking back, I wish I had broken it up into smaller pieces. I enjoyed bashing that rock!
I did mess with the aquascape a few times over 3-4 months, but the bulk of it was good from the beginning. And yes, there's the first water in the shot above. Love the JBJ glass cover by the way. But the plastic clips that came with them were crap. Had to order others.
We started off with a no fish bottle bac cycle, using Dr. Tims one and only and the ammonia sold to feed the bacteria. Shortly after we bought 2 ORA standard clown fish and got them started in the fish QT. We had put media in the AIO to add to the QT tank and it stayed at 0 ammonia. We did the full copper and Prazi Pro pretty much as Jay Hemdal laid out. We've made some changes to the QT we use since then.
Despite the "One and Only" of Dr. Tims, I picked up a couple of different starter bacteria and added them in as well. We used mainly Salifert tests to monitor the cycle, plus a Hanna Salinity Checker for the salt water.
Before Christmas, my dog suffered a broken leg and the $6000 price tag to fix it for my little 6 pound pup had me panicking and really questioning the wisdom of entering into the reef world. We are solidly working class joes, where money is tight. The dog was something I did for myself at the beginning of 2021, after not having a dog for 14 years because I said we couldn't afford it. The tank was really working as a way to bring us closer....so we made it work.
In January, the clowns, Carl and Mike, went into the display tank. They've now become Mike and Carla. Mike is a biter. Hates the Turkey baster and siphon with a passion. They've done great, though they tend to hang out behind the rock. Perfectly happy, but not much to see.
About the same time, I found an "in tank refugium" and placed an order with Algae Barn for pods, Phyto, Sea Lettuce, and 5 cerith snails. More on the refugium in another post.
Shortly after the clowns went in, I had a business trip to ORLANDO! Y'all likely know what that means.
More to come, but here's some current pictures of the tank. It's about 9 months old, starting from when we added the clown fish. About a month after we started the cycle.
Full tank, pretty blue. Nearly lights out.
Right side, which I consider our LPS side. And yes, there's an aptasia on the Blasto. Took care of him the other day. Have 2 more that I know of to get rid of. Carla is peeking out through the tunnel from the back.
Left side including the refugium. Darn sinularia is a sad tree in this pic. It's a bit hard to find a time when all of the various leather corals are all happy. They take turns moping. But then there's Sunny, my citron clown goby. He's quite a character.
Thanks for reading if you've made it this far!
I'll be back to chat about the refugium, which I really enjoy, as well as some ups and downs we've had along the way. And I also want to mention some silly newbie things I didn't know about until we got our corals. And what I did bring back from Orlando.
The title? Maybe a bit of hyperbole, but I was asked last year, "What do you and your husband talk about besides the kids and the business?" We have 3 fabulous kids and my husband works under me in our small business that (sometimes barely) supports the family. My answer? Uhhh......I really didn't have one. It was kindly suggested that we do something about that! We had been tuning each other out after work, each doing our own thing unless we were doing stuff with the kids. There were times we did stuff without the kids, but they were far from a "date night." Usually business related.
Scrolling though Instagram, I came across someone in my industry who also was also a marine biologist and she would sometimes share pictures of her reef tank. I found it fascinating and since Eric and I had talked about doing a reef tank many years ago, I brought the idea up to him. We always thought we'd have to wait until we had more money to spare, but a divorce is plenty expensive too!
When viewing it as a form of couples therapy, it seemed like something to try. Not that I'm recommending a tank as a replacement for therapy, but I couldn't really get him to commit to therapy. We've been married 28 years by that time, and for most of it, we've been best friends and very close. But the last 10 years have been hard. Throw in covid at a small public facing business too and you just need to invest in something to keep the sanity and the love alive.
I love to do research, Eric doesn't. So I did a lot of the reading and we'd talk about what I learned. We found that we each had interests in the hobby. He was the gear head, I was the caretaker. We started watching various youtube videos together, much to the kids' dismay.
After getting a nice stimulus check, we decided to put part of it towards our reef tank idea.November 2021 Black Friday, we ordered a JBJ 65g all in one, got 2 Kessil A180 Tuna Blue lights and controller, and a bunch of other equipment from our local fish store/pet store. That store is dangerously close to our business! However, we already knew that we wouldn't likely buy much in the way of fish or corals there as the tanks were nasty. Lots of algae, aptasia, and usually a dead fish or two. The people were great, but if I wanted to bring home hitchhikers, I wanted to be a little surprised by what I was getting. We found this to be true of two other shops about an hour away. This led us to feel the need to quarantine both fish and inverts.
We set up 2 QT tanks, 10g each. Bought a RODI unit from BRS, tubing and such mostly from the local LFS or hardware store, Brut trash cans, etc and hubby was in hog heaven. Or at least reefer heaven. He started making water, then salt water using Tropic Marin Pro reef....thankfully, we did not have any issues with it as this was during that snafu with the Turkey salt.
I focused on the aquascape. Used liferock and their shapes. I think that's what it was. Painted purple stuff. Looking back, I wish I had broken it up into smaller pieces. I enjoyed bashing that rock!
I did mess with the aquascape a few times over 3-4 months, but the bulk of it was good from the beginning. And yes, there's the first water in the shot above. Love the JBJ glass cover by the way. But the plastic clips that came with them were crap. Had to order others.
We started off with a no fish bottle bac cycle, using Dr. Tims one and only and the ammonia sold to feed the bacteria. Shortly after we bought 2 ORA standard clown fish and got them started in the fish QT. We had put media in the AIO to add to the QT tank and it stayed at 0 ammonia. We did the full copper and Prazi Pro pretty much as Jay Hemdal laid out. We've made some changes to the QT we use since then.
Despite the "One and Only" of Dr. Tims, I picked up a couple of different starter bacteria and added them in as well. We used mainly Salifert tests to monitor the cycle, plus a Hanna Salinity Checker for the salt water.
Before Christmas, my dog suffered a broken leg and the $6000 price tag to fix it for my little 6 pound pup had me panicking and really questioning the wisdom of entering into the reef world. We are solidly working class joes, where money is tight. The dog was something I did for myself at the beginning of 2021, after not having a dog for 14 years because I said we couldn't afford it. The tank was really working as a way to bring us closer....so we made it work.
In January, the clowns, Carl and Mike, went into the display tank. They've now become Mike and Carla. Mike is a biter. Hates the Turkey baster and siphon with a passion. They've done great, though they tend to hang out behind the rock. Perfectly happy, but not much to see.
About the same time, I found an "in tank refugium" and placed an order with Algae Barn for pods, Phyto, Sea Lettuce, and 5 cerith snails. More on the refugium in another post.
Shortly after the clowns went in, I had a business trip to ORLANDO! Y'all likely know what that means.
More to come, but here's some current pictures of the tank. It's about 9 months old, starting from when we added the clown fish. About a month after we started the cycle.
Full tank, pretty blue. Nearly lights out.
Right side, which I consider our LPS side. And yes, there's an aptasia on the Blasto. Took care of him the other day. Have 2 more that I know of to get rid of. Carla is peeking out through the tunnel from the back.
Left side including the refugium. Darn sinularia is a sad tree in this pic. It's a bit hard to find a time when all of the various leather corals are all happy. They take turns moping. But then there's Sunny, my citron clown goby. He's quite a character.
Thanks for reading if you've made it this far!
I'll be back to chat about the refugium, which I really enjoy, as well as some ups and downs we've had along the way. And I also want to mention some silly newbie things I didn't know about until we got our corals. And what I did bring back from Orlando.
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