What brought you into Reefing?

[kien]

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!

[Skimmerking]

Originally Posted by marie

It was all my husbands fault (he bought me my first 20g sw tank 16yrs ago), something I got to remind him of very recently when I ordered the bubbleking skimmer

Wow Marie your getting old

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

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

[marie]

Originally Posted by asmodeus

Wow Marie your getting old

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

[bignose]

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.

[burtonpj48]

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

[BlueAbyss]

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.

[globaldesigns]

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!!!

[Key Equine]

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...

[fishoholic]

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.........