this thread seems to have fizzled out. It was a good read over my lunch hour. Can't remember now how I stumbled upon it..

Got my first fresh water tank back in High School when I tagged along with a friend to a place called Hole-In-The-Wall in Calgary. Anyone else remember that place?? Anyway, have had various sizes of fresh water over the years since then. Never even considered saltwater until my Sister's boyfriend at the time decided to set one up in their new house. This was in 2002 I think. They happened to live across the street from me. One weekend that year we both drove to Big Al's and loaded up a Nissan Pathfinder with two 90gs, stands and other stuff. I have moved 3 times since and have had a new tank at each new home plus 3 upgrades at my current home.. 90g, 33g, 55g, 90g, 150g. Stay tuned for my 150g to 280g upgrade/build thread! :rofl:

Wow Marie your getting old :lol:

Have been doing fw for 32 years now. Started my first sw in the mid-80s with a 33g (lionfish) & a 110g fowlr with a Smooth Horn SHARK, Passer King Angel, MOORISH IDOL, & Snowflake Moray filtered by a Whisper3 HOB, a Magnum cannister, and a Undergravel filter with NO liverock (what's that?) and crushed coral substrate. Call it beginner's luck but no problems keeping either the Shark or the Moorish Idol, although I would never do that nowadays.

Started SW again after watching Finding Nemo with Irene. We came home from the movie theater on Tuesday, found a complete 33g setup on Wednesday & bought it, brought it home & set it up on Thursday. Several thousands later (I really DON'T want to know exactly how much), I'm up to a 210g mixed garden reef with 75g sump, 120g softie/anemone reef (ex-fowlr), and 90g seahorse refugium/sump.

Altogether, over 800g of volume in my small 2 bedroom groundfloor suite & out of electricity so no more tanks (famous last words).

Anthony

Like a good whiskey, some things just get better with age :mrgreen:

A 20G freshwater tank as a gift for my son. I got the bug and bought a 55G FW setup and moved to SW about a year later.

My girl friend and i were at Ocean Park in Philippines, I really enjoyed watching the fishes, after that i was hooked. hehhehe

I had small FW tanks when I was a teenager, did the community tank thing for a couple years. What solidified reefing for me was snorkeling in the lagoon at Xcaret, Mexico... I spent half a day just snorkelling. It took me years to actually set up a tank (finally did a few months ago) but that's what did it... I have an image in my head of an anemone-like pink coral, black urchins with blue and purple iridescence on their spines, small blue fishes, things I don't have names for.

I am now 40, but started in freshwater when I was about 12... Anyways about 9 years ago, I bought a new house, moved everything including my tank, eventually I noticed a crack and paniced as I had a tank blow before... So I dismantled and got rid of everything...

About 3 years ago, my brother bought my daughter a 4 gallon tank, I set it up as a freshwater, and I got hooked again... Shortly after I bought myself a 28 gallon JBJ nano (saltwater), then got my son a 4 gallon saltwater... then got myself a 300 gallon (saltwater) setup...

As you can see, went crazy with tanks, but LOVE IT!!!

I had a freshwater tanks on and off for years, never considered saltwater because I thought it would be too much work and too expensive.
Then I went on the tour of the Ocean Rider setup in Hawaii, where they raise captive seahorses and sell them directly to hobbyists (unfortunately not to Canada :( I was amazed by the seahorses and the idea of getting captive bred really appealed to me. I came home, sold my freshwater livestock, and converted to my current seahorse species tank! That was only about six months ago, so I'm still a newbie! But I'm loving it...

5 1/2 years ago Steve (my boyfriend) wanted a FW tank. I always thought tanks were noisy and annoying, but he really want one so we got a 20g FW tank. I started to like the fish and after a short while we added a 15g, a 8g and a 5g (all FW tanks) into the mix. We admired my friend Lee's (aka bulletsworld) SW tank but it looked complicated and living in a smallish condo we didn't have a lot of room to set one up. Fast forward almost a year and we sold the condo and bought a house. In the house we kept the 20g FW tank and set up a 110g brackish tank. On boxing day 2005 we bought a 60g tank that was intended for our FW fish that were outgrowing the 20g. Started thinking about Lee's SW tank and started to ask her many many many questions about how to set one up. She told us about canreef and we ended up selling all our FW and Brackish fish and took the plunge into salt water.

Since then this is a list of tanks we've had: it all started with the 60g, then came a 10g mantis tank, then a 10g JBJ Nano Cube which turned into a 15g long tank which turned into a 30g cube tank. Then we thought we'd combine our 60g and 10g together in a new larger tank with a sump and refugium area for Mr. mantis. So the 60g and 10g turned into a 120g with a 50g sump. Then we realized the 120g wasn't nearly big enough for our tangs and we were tired of topping off our 30g cube all the time. So the 120g and 30g turned into the 230g reef tank (that I have now) and we ended up using the old brackish 110g tank that we had for a sump. We added baffles to it but the baffles we put in it blew out shortly after setting it up, so 2 rubbermaids became makeshift baffle/refugium compartments. Stared liking angelfish more and more so after buying a few two many for the 230g reef tank we have, we added another tank and set up the 230g fowlr tank that we have know. Also at that time we changed out the 110g sump for a proper 90g (with baffles and real compartments) sump.

So here I am 3 1/2 years into the SW hobby and many tanks later, with the final tanks (so far) being two 230g tanks all plumbed together into a 90g sump. Ironically the only SW inhabitant that I still have from the first few months into the hobby is my mantis. My CBB is a close 2nd who came a few months later.

Hummmm...... a 60g-80g cube frog/toad fish tank might be nice.........

could not say no the the price I paid for my 250 (tank,stand,lids,and other stuff) and I got all the stuff from a friends 90. That was 3 years a go.

hmmm where do you get this book? might save me trips 2 or 3 times a week to my moms to find a hidden snail, make sure the salinity is the same(i've explained it dont really change ;)) or reprogram her controller cause it magically resets.

I had all this money sitting in the bank doing nothing so I thought "What's an easy way to get rid of all this cash?" So I got into reefing.:lol:

I kept FW for about 20 years and wanted SW for about 10.. about 1.5 years ago I pulled the plug and started into SW

went to seaworld in florida when i was 8... didn't care about leaving disney world but when we had to leave seaworld after only 3 days i cried...

i had 7 fw tanks withch started by my sister-in-law giving my kids a 20gal. then i started a 30gal swr and never looked back. now i have only one tank and its 150gal

I saw the coloring of a flame angel and the looks of a lion fish and thought to myself that I had to have one. So I went out and got a 125 gallon made and have been hooked ever since.

Started out in FW when I was 5 or 6. My uncle owned a pet store and gave us a tank. I always admired the colors of the SW tanks though. Later in life when I started traveling, I got to experience swimming/snorkeling/diving with the same fish that I saw and loved as a child at his store. Conveniently, I fell in love with a guy who had SW tanks previously (but none at the time). Then I came across a deal I couldn't refuse this past Christmas. Just before Christmas, I had arranged for a neighbor to move his tank into our new house the day before our move-in day. They had buyer's remorse (preferred their FW tanks) and needed work done on their company website. Just so happens that I do web design, LOL. It was an awesome trade. We are hooked for sure and so is our cat!

Welcome to canreef ScubaGirl!!

We all love tank photos here... best to post some up before Mikey (Asmodeus) gets on your case for them. :razz::mrgreen:

YA WELCOME TO CANREEF KIDO... and by the way nice picture, nice mask,

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nice aurghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh where are the damn pictures of the tank.... come on and Oh ya
wanna hang out i can show you all my SKIMMER's :mrgreen:

Don't scare the poor girl away Mike ^^ LOL!

Used to have FW tanks when I was younger but always liked SW more (more interesting IMO) but was always told they were expensive, BIG, too much work, etc.. So I quit doing FW after my fishes died and got rid of my equip. Well, I recently heard about nano-reefs. It sounded perfect for me! So I researched and am now in the process of building my setup. The price is a bit high (compared to FW) but it'll be worth it. I'm starting small (10G nano) but enjoying every minute of it. I'm actually scared I enjoy the preparing and setup more than the finished product!

Pics are already up. Takes more than that to scare me, LOL.

Never thought to run Christmas lights around my tank to be festive but then again If I plug anything else In I might burn my house down.... There's lots of scary people here, I'm sure you will fit right in welcome to the forum :lol:.
Levi

Lights and tinsel came with the tank, LOL. I coordinated it to be set up the day before we moved into our new house. The previous owners came in and set it up for us. That is what it looked like when we walked in with the first load of stuff. Totally surprised my hubby, it was fun. He reacted well considering all the work I just dumped on him. The Christmas gift that costs him money. :lol:

When I moved into my own place in 2000, I wanted to set up a fish tank in my wall. I liked the colors of marine fish and have kept them many years before and decided to set up a marine tank. I found an online marine fish store (J&L Aquatics) and browsed their website. Interestingly, I found that they sold corals too. That was my first exposure to living corals. Just looking at the website inspired me to set up a reef instead of a fish only tank. I bought my liverocks, and cleanup crew from J&L and my first coral from CanadaWest (fellow Canreef member). It was a pulsing Xenia.

After having freshwater for years, breeding numerous varieties and then doing hightech planted tanks with CO2 & dosing, I thought I'd try something easy for a change :mrgreen:

Seriously, seeing all the variety of awesome fish, corals & inverts, I knew that I'd eventually take the plunge. Finally broke down my biggest fw tank, and started getting all the gear together. When a friend had to break down his reef tank, I snagged his live rock for a song and got everything set up and swimming.

I used to have lots of FW stuff and plants and the whole package until I was looking for things to buy on bigalsonline and I saw this pico reef kit for just over 100 bucks so I was searching then ended up buying 29g biocube. Now I got a 40g br set up and hopefully 200g+ system soon! :mrgreen:

We rescued a 90g from an abandoned apartment. It was in bad shape, hundreds of apatasia, urine yellow water, dying corals. We still have the clowns and the brown carpet is with a friend. We were freshies, but now have gotten rid of allmost all of them. Minus our ponds and Betas.

i saw a seahorse for the first time and i just fell inlove with them so i got a tanka dn instead got a pipefish didnt turn out tooo well he starved and then i moved onto different fish, i got a new aquarium today its a 35 gallon, with a regal tang (poor thing should be in a 75 gallon) and a clownfish and a chromis and a anemone. Btw im selling them all in a month or so!

Sell them faster and then upgrade your tank to a 100g :lol:, lots of great deals in the buy and sell section. How big is the regal now, really small tanks can cause larger tangs to go a little crazy and tends to be very detrimental to there health.

Family, and seahorses, and marine culture and how it's so beautiful

a former Fishville fanatic
 

I read everyone's stories of how they got into the hobby, nice read. I didn't see someone's tank and fall in love, and I haven't had the chance to go scuba diving anywhere spectacular yet.

How I got into the hobby was playing an online game!! haha There is a game on facebook called "Fishville". Its essentially an online tank where you may buy and sell your fish. You have to feed them, give them medicine when they get sick, aquascape etc. I learned many of the names of the more common SW fish you'll see in fish stores and started my own online collection. I liked this game so much that I began to wish I could have real live fish in my own SW aquarium.

From there I bought a beginners book on the hobby to see if it was something I could be interested in / have time for. After reading that I read 4 more books over a few months I started up the hobby!!! (and quit Fishville)

My tank is a 30G (36" L x 12" W) that used to be my grandpa's, so my family is stoked that one of his tanks is up and running again. He was big into FW tanks. I have a second tank in the basement, a 90G which isn't un and running quite yet.

lol

water in my mind, how the 350 gal started
 

ok, so it would be family that triggered it, however it has a long stories

we immigrated from Holland, where I as a kid always had water somewhere, and had at the top about 10 FW tanks (salt water is almost un affordable as already electric would set you back about $ 0.33 a KHW) as well as fish and corals art cheep.

beside the tanks I had a 10.000 gal koi pond with lots of 20" + koi's and as a hobby I had a wholesale in importing kois and supply's local fish - garden centers.

arriving in Canada, what do you do, water is itching and would have loved to get a nice big koi pond, however where we live (Victoria) there is the racoon, sea otter and lots more, so by the time you are set up and running, it is a nice $ that eventually would be wiled animal foods (we could not integrate a pond in the house, at least not a decent size one)

so, itching, itching, and ad least a nice water feature in the yard, but no fish.

than my cousin wanted to change his fish only tank to a coral tank, so I could have all equipment, rock etc. what would be a nice saving.

so now a tank

we went where thy build tanks, and as we had some saving in the decoration / equipment we decided to spend some of the saving on the tank, and asked what thy had as bigges thy had for us.

we ended up with a 350 gal tank that needed a spot in the house + a opening in the wall to get it in.

space wise we went for a fish only, as it would still be less space needed for filter, les light and than les money to start.

soon after the tank was in, someone gave me a mushroom frag (WHAT IT WAS GROWING) even under ordinary light, so, would be nice to have some corals, so we got a few more, and soon it was time to get everything changed (light, pumps, gravel bed out - LS in, filter) so all set up, ready to do it over, but now for corals.

and as you se the pictures under my profile (albums) I cant complain.

it is still part DIY, however everything is running as it should, everything is growing so.

things I might change would be:

- in stead of 4x 150W DE HQI I would put 4x 250W (dont know how much of a difference it would make, things are growing now, so maybe I will first change one ore 2 to se what it douse for the tank and corals.

beside the 4x150 w DE HQI there is 2x 54w - act + 2x daylight T5

- adding more fish, only have 3 tangs, -- 5 clowns --- 2 fire fish and 2 shrimps ------> probably a 4 ore 5 yellow / orange anthias would be nice

- change the skimmer neck on my DIY on my 6 feet skimmer from a 3 inch to 5 1/2 inch --- skimmer is running fine, however skim mate could be darker if you ask me, is still a bit light, and the neck is always full of junk, so a larger diameter should be easier to tweak, as so far it has always bin fairly wet skim

- build a 60 inch square tank 28 inch deep, fiberglass and 2 windows, placing it on a 45 degree angle in the wall (having the filter room in the back)

Roomates 20Gallon Cichlid tank started off my first FW tanks.

10Gallon Starter Kit... One week later upgraded to 20Gallon, Changed tank almost every few months.

Never thought id ever start a reef tank even tho some of my friends had some.
Well a little bit of MJ and im HOOKED on SW for life.
I can just stare at fish tanks forever... It is what it is hahahah.

my story
 

Was alway interested in fish tanks did some research and started with a freshwater 10 gallon starter and got hooked then to a 30 gallon to breed mollys and did so very easily... met my current GF and she had a 30 fresh too
Then moved up to a 55 gallon with chiclids (breeding too) want them for color, the Gf had a salt with her ex and missed it and i always wanted one but knew little about them then got a line on a free 75 gallon salt established for about 7 years sold the rest and here i sit today we kept her 30 gallon to raise fresh water angel fish.

Started my mini reef because I had some Clowns that picked on everything else in the tank. So I picked up some corals for them to play with... The clowns loved the coral, the coral didn't recipricate... So I don't have the clowns any more and I have 4 times as much coral :)

I got my first tank from Gr 7 science.. one of the labs was to bring in a container/jar. and they gave us a little plant, a guppy, and a snail and locked them in for a weekend, and amazingly everyone's fish were still alive. my first upgrade was a 10g from a garage sale which im sure i then overstocked.. but everyone did fairly ok. always believed in heavily planted tanks. there were stores in the mall but regularly, i would get my parents to take me to hole in the wall, or i would ride my bike there.. sometimes in winter, -25 to go get something for my fish. I always liked the salt section but could not afford it, had fw tanks straight though till i broke up with my ex and left my 90g there.

after i bought this house i looked at all the left over fish stuff i had read the internet a bit.. had some spare money.. got some diy pc lights a skimmer and some rocks.. and now I'm here