I have been in this hobby longer than most people here have been on this earth that's not a brag it's a confession and I apologise for my rants that I feel passionate about. I set up my first SW tank along the lines of the day, undergravel filter large vibrating airpump abd T8/12 tube lighting.
Tuffa rock was the only aquarium rock availble unless you could afford expensive smelly awful live rock which was more dead and about a live as a year old corpes. We struggled with most things including the dreaded white spot and velvet.
Actually I tell a lie I never had a fish with velvet but white spot was rife along with primitive copper treatment, copper sulphate. Administering of copper treatment gave you a 50/50 chance 50% if itvwould kill your fish and 50% if the white spot would.
We bought magazines no interweb back then, well we had morse code but few of us had the equipment or could work out the dots from the dashes. Luckily we had all but indestructible damsels but if we tried hard enough we could kill them.
Something had to change but what? All the experts said thou must or thou must not, sometimes the thou's got mixed up which didn't seem to make that much difference. Marine fishkeeping was hard enough inverts impossible, just as well as there were few inverts to be bought.
Some Asian guy had a system he called the natural system. However, it wasn't really so natural really. OK it was based on live rock and live sand but it was taken directly from the reef and didn't need curing or smell like rotten eggs.
This guy also changed vast quantities of natural seawater as he lived near the reef. Try replicating similar when you live far away from the sea without any reefs and seawater that is so cold it would shrink your gonads to nothing swimming in it not to mention the Richard the thirds discharged directly into it.
After a few years getting fed up with playing Russian roulette we played with our tanks. I decided to rethink the whole marine keeping thing.
I planned a new tank of 130 gallons with something called a sump I have heard about. I visited an LFS that had such a setup called the mini reef. Unfortunately it was kidney selling money so it was right out.
That's when I had my Eureka moment I decided to design my own which was powered by a canister filter with a turnover through the sump of once every 3 hours, real slow. Won't work the thou must s said but it did and worked beautifully.
My real Eureka moment was when I turned towards mother nature for inspiration. After all she has had millions of years to perfect her ways and held all the cards. I wanted to follow her as much as reasonably possible.
I grew caulerpa after being told you couldn't grow it in an aquarium. That helped keep nitrates down and did other things beneficial to water quality. I bought mature live rock from the people with lots of money that decided to sell up and move onto another hobby probably after 18months and bought a caravan instead.
I made my own foods instead of feeding cornflakes masquerading as food. The thou shall not staid I would introduce disease and wipe my tank out with the pathogens viruses and smallpox I would introduce doing so. They said all uch marine foods had to be gamma irradiated. They were wrong.... again.
I didn't QT before and didn't QT after, mother nature doesn't either. I used an ozoniser and a UV untiI discovered Oxydator's. OK OK there I go again talking about Oxydator's but that the last time I shall mention them here except mother nature doesn't use an Oxydator. actually she does but I said I wouldn't mention them again and I have done.
Anemones were considered very difficult keep and a H.Riteri impossible. I was told you would be lucky to get one to live fior more than a couple of months. I bought one against the advice and I had it about 8 years before I had to break the tank down and move it on along with it's resident 3 common clowns. 2 of the clowns spawned continously. That anemone appeared on the front cover of a book. I still have a copy of it.
People came from far and wide to see my tank inc the guys from Chester zoo aquarium. Comments were more than favourable. Most visitors said they hadn't seen anything like it. I had a few inverts that did well, all of the soft variety as few hard corals were availble back then.
I did have one a Tubinaria coral that did well. I had upped the lightning from a couple of tubes to Mercury vapour lamps then industrial type 250w HQI lamps which worked wonders. These were instrumental in me being able to keep the Riteri nem so well along with my water quality.
Since that tank I have had around 9 others either upgrading or moving house forcing me to break them down and start all over again. However, even though equipment has improved vastly my philosophy to reefkeeping has remained the same. I have tweaked it here and there of hours but the fundamentals remain the same.
I have a tank build thread for those curious enough to see it. Of you go this far well done you stood the test of boredom tonwhich I congratulate you. Happy Reefkerping and nay you never have to scratch that itch.
PS I typed all that out on my phone so sorry for the poor grammar and spelling, I can't be bothered going back and correcting it.
My current reef.
Tuffa rock was the only aquarium rock availble unless you could afford expensive smelly awful live rock which was more dead and about a live as a year old corpes. We struggled with most things including the dreaded white spot and velvet.
Actually I tell a lie I never had a fish with velvet but white spot was rife along with primitive copper treatment, copper sulphate. Administering of copper treatment gave you a 50/50 chance 50% if itvwould kill your fish and 50% if the white spot would.
We bought magazines no interweb back then, well we had morse code but few of us had the equipment or could work out the dots from the dashes. Luckily we had all but indestructible damsels but if we tried hard enough we could kill them.
Something had to change but what? All the experts said thou must or thou must not, sometimes the thou's got mixed up which didn't seem to make that much difference. Marine fishkeeping was hard enough inverts impossible, just as well as there were few inverts to be bought.
Some Asian guy had a system he called the natural system. However, it wasn't really so natural really. OK it was based on live rock and live sand but it was taken directly from the reef and didn't need curing or smell like rotten eggs.
This guy also changed vast quantities of natural seawater as he lived near the reef. Try replicating similar when you live far away from the sea without any reefs and seawater that is so cold it would shrink your gonads to nothing swimming in it not to mention the Richard the thirds discharged directly into it.
After a few years getting fed up with playing Russian roulette we played with our tanks. I decided to rethink the whole marine keeping thing.
I planned a new tank of 130 gallons with something called a sump I have heard about. I visited an LFS that had such a setup called the mini reef. Unfortunately it was kidney selling money so it was right out.
That's when I had my Eureka moment I decided to design my own which was powered by a canister filter with a turnover through the sump of once every 3 hours, real slow. Won't work the thou must s said but it did and worked beautifully.
My real Eureka moment was when I turned towards mother nature for inspiration. After all she has had millions of years to perfect her ways and held all the cards. I wanted to follow her as much as reasonably possible.
I grew caulerpa after being told you couldn't grow it in an aquarium. That helped keep nitrates down and did other things beneficial to water quality. I bought mature live rock from the people with lots of money that decided to sell up and move onto another hobby probably after 18months and bought a caravan instead.
I made my own foods instead of feeding cornflakes masquerading as food. The thou shall not staid I would introduce disease and wipe my tank out with the pathogens viruses and smallpox I would introduce doing so. They said all uch marine foods had to be gamma irradiated. They were wrong.... again.
I didn't QT before and didn't QT after, mother nature doesn't either. I used an ozoniser and a UV untiI discovered Oxydator's. OK OK there I go again talking about Oxydator's but that the last time I shall mention them here except mother nature doesn't use an Oxydator. actually she does but I said I wouldn't mention them again and I have done.
Anemones were considered very difficult keep and a H.Riteri impossible. I was told you would be lucky to get one to live fior more than a couple of months. I bought one against the advice and I had it about 8 years before I had to break the tank down and move it on along with it's resident 3 common clowns. 2 of the clowns spawned continously. That anemone appeared on the front cover of a book. I still have a copy of it.
People came from far and wide to see my tank inc the guys from Chester zoo aquarium. Comments were more than favourable. Most visitors said they hadn't seen anything like it. I had a few inverts that did well, all of the soft variety as few hard corals were availble back then.
I did have one a Tubinaria coral that did well. I had upped the lightning from a couple of tubes to Mercury vapour lamps then industrial type 250w HQI lamps which worked wonders. These were instrumental in me being able to keep the Riteri nem so well along with my water quality.
Since that tank I have had around 9 others either upgrading or moving house forcing me to break them down and start all over again. However, even though equipment has improved vastly my philosophy to reefkeeping has remained the same. I have tweaked it here and there of hours but the fundamentals remain the same.
I have a tank build thread for those curious enough to see it. Of you go this far well done you stood the test of boredom tonwhich I congratulate you. Happy Reefkerping and nay you never have to scratch that itch.
PS I typed all that out on my phone so sorry for the poor grammar and spelling, I can't be bothered going back and correcting it.
My current reef.
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