This is a bitter sweet build thread for me. If you’re lucky enough, you get to meet some interesting people in this hobby. Luckier still if you can be close friends.
In the pre-dawn hours of 11/30/22, my friend and fellow hobbyist Frankie suffered a fatal heart attack. A life long fitness enthusiast, he’d always work out before work as a union carpenter in Philadelphia. Making friends wherever he went, one just so happened to be the gym owner who’d given him a key so he could work out before the gym opened each morning. Tragically, nobody was there to help in his final moments. His love for life was only surpassed by his love for family and friends. And the Philadelphia Eagles. Like many of us, we chatted often about all things reef; me the SPS enthusiast and he more the mixed reef type. He’d just broken down a 75 gallon tank the previous year (that was thriving) so that he could upgrade to the largest aquarium he could fit through the door of his south Philadelphia row home. We’re reefers. That’s what we do. But him seeing that reef aquarium mature would never come to pass. Try as she did, his wife diligently tried to keep the tank going. Through many phone calls and some visits, I attempted to walk her through things, but keeping a reef tank is hard enough for a hobbyist let alone a grieving spouse and mother with a lot on her plate. Reluctantly, I slowly helped break the aquarium down. A few months back she’d mentioned she was moving and the sight of the tank declining was too much to bear. I simply didn’t have room in my systems for his fish at the time (which I’ve since rehomed) and many of the corals looked worse for wear.
I inherited his aquarium. Bittersweet. Yesterday I picked it up and drove it the 60 miles back home in my pickup. It’s an SCA 60x24x24 150 gallon eurobraced peninsula with external overflow. I have the space in my finished basement where it can sit opposite my in wall SPS tank and get the attention it deserves. I’m not a young man anymore, and fortunately old enough to remember the reefer’s code of banking your corals with a friend. I can’t think of a better way to honor that code and the bond with a close friend than to steward his reef aquarium through the coming years. I’m setting it up as close as possible to the way he left it; and left us. I think he’d have liked that.
He was my friend. I miss him.
In the pre-dawn hours of 11/30/22, my friend and fellow hobbyist Frankie suffered a fatal heart attack. A life long fitness enthusiast, he’d always work out before work as a union carpenter in Philadelphia. Making friends wherever he went, one just so happened to be the gym owner who’d given him a key so he could work out before the gym opened each morning. Tragically, nobody was there to help in his final moments. His love for life was only surpassed by his love for family and friends. And the Philadelphia Eagles. Like many of us, we chatted often about all things reef; me the SPS enthusiast and he more the mixed reef type. He’d just broken down a 75 gallon tank the previous year (that was thriving) so that he could upgrade to the largest aquarium he could fit through the door of his south Philadelphia row home. We’re reefers. That’s what we do. But him seeing that reef aquarium mature would never come to pass. Try as she did, his wife diligently tried to keep the tank going. Through many phone calls and some visits, I attempted to walk her through things, but keeping a reef tank is hard enough for a hobbyist let alone a grieving spouse and mother with a lot on her plate. Reluctantly, I slowly helped break the aquarium down. A few months back she’d mentioned she was moving and the sight of the tank declining was too much to bear. I simply didn’t have room in my systems for his fish at the time (which I’ve since rehomed) and many of the corals looked worse for wear.
I inherited his aquarium. Bittersweet. Yesterday I picked it up and drove it the 60 miles back home in my pickup. It’s an SCA 60x24x24 150 gallon eurobraced peninsula with external overflow. I have the space in my finished basement where it can sit opposite my in wall SPS tank and get the attention it deserves. I’m not a young man anymore, and fortunately old enough to remember the reefer’s code of banking your corals with a friend. I can’t think of a better way to honor that code and the bond with a close friend than to steward his reef aquarium through the coming years. I’m setting it up as close as possible to the way he left it; and left us. I think he’d have liked that.
He was my friend. I miss him.
