TheDeepSandBed
New member
Hi everyone! My name is Ben and I got into reefing shortly before graduating college in 2003. I had a pretty ramshackle 55g reef I pieced together on a students budget, but unfortunately I ended up having to move multiple times and so I decided to wait on my next tank until I bought a place and could settle down. Fast forward 10 years (wow time flies!) and I closed on a place in October of 2014 (condo in Chicago) and began planning.
So living on the 3rd floor (walk up) of a condo building in the city presented certain limiting factors for what I could do vs I wanted to do. Although I would like to do a bigger tank, 80g seemed reasonable given the space and weight issues. I also figured I wanted something that had a cleaner look than my old tank. My old tank basically looked like the pump rooms of the TOTM tanks I drool over every month. Hang on refugium, exposed sump for the world to see, an ever glowing bedroom closet where I grew phytoplankton, crumby lights that kept everything alive but not thriving. Overall it was more about learning than excelling. I wanted to try and change that this time around.
I ended up settling on an Innovative Marine SR-80. I really liked the look of the tank. I liked the design and had read some really good reviews online. I ordered the tank in December and was told it was backordered for 2 weeks.
Two weeks passed, and luck would have it that there was a dock workers strike in California that left my tank floating somewhere out in Long Beach Bay. I waited patiently for almost three months. Finally the tank came a week and a half ago! Thankfully that gave me plenty of time to brush back up on my chemistry and get everything in place ahead of time. Although I think my girlfriend was tired of looking at boxes of reef rocks and various tank related clutter sitting in our living room.
So the tank was dropped off literally in the middle of the street. Thanks to 2 very good friends, we managed to lug this extremely heavy tank up 3 flights of stairs and get it situated.
So living on the 3rd floor (walk up) of a condo building in the city presented certain limiting factors for what I could do vs I wanted to do. Although I would like to do a bigger tank, 80g seemed reasonable given the space and weight issues. I also figured I wanted something that had a cleaner look than my old tank. My old tank basically looked like the pump rooms of the TOTM tanks I drool over every month. Hang on refugium, exposed sump for the world to see, an ever glowing bedroom closet where I grew phytoplankton, crumby lights that kept everything alive but not thriving. Overall it was more about learning than excelling. I wanted to try and change that this time around.
I ended up settling on an Innovative Marine SR-80. I really liked the look of the tank. I liked the design and had read some really good reviews online. I ordered the tank in December and was told it was backordered for 2 weeks.
Two weeks passed, and luck would have it that there was a dock workers strike in California that left my tank floating somewhere out in Long Beach Bay. I waited patiently for almost three months. Finally the tank came a week and a half ago! Thankfully that gave me plenty of time to brush back up on my chemistry and get everything in place ahead of time. Although I think my girlfriend was tired of looking at boxes of reef rocks and various tank related clutter sitting in our living room.
So the tank was dropped off literally in the middle of the street. Thanks to 2 very good friends, we managed to lug this extremely heavy tank up 3 flights of stairs and get it situated.
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