wanderlest
New member
I don’t know where to begin, simply because I seriously still don’t know how I’m going to do all this yet - I have ZERO reef building research or experience under my belt. If you haven’t seen my cousin’s story yet, I’d recommend you read his thread first,
My 1300 gallon addiction: A Miami reef build story
Well, now that you have that backstory, let me walk you through how it ended up in my life. After purchasing a house, I decided to rebuild my entire house, pretty much from scratch. As I am entering the finally stages of the building process and laying out the final design of my kitchen, I noticed there is something missing. You’re probably wondering why I’m talking about my house when this is a reef community; I promise it all ties in. The kitchen doesn’t have any windows, I installed glass French doors but it still needed something more, not much daylight was coming in and I hated it! Oh what to do?
Insert cousin DannyDJD and our conversations as he’s building his 1000 gallon tank:
Cousin: Bro, why don’t you put my old tank in your house? Put it in the living room, it’ll be sick as hell there.
Me: NAH bro, I see the amount of time you spend on that thing, I don’t have time for that.
Cousin: Nah, you can probably do a fish only tank and you’ll be good. No spot feeding, water parameter……… (this is where he starts talking a ton of reef community gibberish, I was clueless, so all I hear is….blah blah.. blah..blahh. blah blah… blahhhhh.)
Me: Sounds cool, I’ll see bro I honestly don’t want to go through that mission.
Now, after this conversation, I get back on my phone and start looking for more kitchen designs – completely blocking out the fish tank thought, not even up for consideration at this moment. Trolling through the web I come across one picture that changes EVERYTHING.
So the next conversation goes a little something like this:
Me: Primo, done, bring the fish tank over immediately I’m installing it at my house.
Cousin: Oh alright cool bro, in the living room?
Me: Nope, in my kitchen in front of the sink.
Cousin: What do you mean?
Me: Listen there is no time for all this back and forth, just bring me your fish tank. ASAP.
Cousin: Bro, it’s not even ready to move I have fish and corals still there waiting for my 1000 gallon.
Me: FML, fine I’ll wait and build the fish room while you get yours up and running but I want it here ASAP!
From that moment on building out the kitchen became, building out the fish room to get it ready for the kitchen. Within hours I went from a No! to a HELL YEAH!!:bounce2:.
As I’ve gone through some of the building process, I find myself daydreaming about all the possibilities and all the things I can do. I end up staring at an empty dirty fish tank, daydreaming about “watching” the fish swim around while I am cooking or just sitting at the peninsula drinking a beer, getting lost for hours endlessly interacting with fish. Maybe I’ll name them, maybe they’ll have these cool personalities, and maybe they will recognize me when I walk by from all the time I’ll be spending with them.
Then I snap out of it and realize that I’m still another month or so away from even getting it filled with water. So for now I’m trying to build a BAMF fish room that will make my life as simple as possible so I can spend some great quality getting to know all the fish that I will put in there.
I owe this new found addiction and will probably owe many more thank yous to several people but let’s start with these.
Saving the best for last, none of this would have been possible if it weren’t for Rick selling my cousin on the idea of having a 210 gallon in his house, if Ian hadn’t presented my cousin with a once in a lifetime opportunity with the 1000 gallon tank, if the mastermind and one of a kind Peter Diaz from Great Ocean Aquariums hadn’t been a part of these builds, and if my cousin had not wanted to keep this tank in the family.
The stars were aligned, so….. without further or do…
The rest of the story goes a little something like this (in pictures)…
After some design ideas, I went ahead and cut the hole where the tank will be.
Untitled by Lester Rodriguez, on Flickr
My 1300 gallon addiction: A Miami reef build story
Well, now that you have that backstory, let me walk you through how it ended up in my life. After purchasing a house, I decided to rebuild my entire house, pretty much from scratch. As I am entering the finally stages of the building process and laying out the final design of my kitchen, I noticed there is something missing. You’re probably wondering why I’m talking about my house when this is a reef community; I promise it all ties in. The kitchen doesn’t have any windows, I installed glass French doors but it still needed something more, not much daylight was coming in and I hated it! Oh what to do?
Insert cousin DannyDJD and our conversations as he’s building his 1000 gallon tank:
Cousin: Bro, why don’t you put my old tank in your house? Put it in the living room, it’ll be sick as hell there.
Me: NAH bro, I see the amount of time you spend on that thing, I don’t have time for that.
Cousin: Nah, you can probably do a fish only tank and you’ll be good. No spot feeding, water parameter……… (this is where he starts talking a ton of reef community gibberish, I was clueless, so all I hear is….blah blah.. blah..blahh. blah blah… blahhhhh.)
Me: Sounds cool, I’ll see bro I honestly don’t want to go through that mission.
Now, after this conversation, I get back on my phone and start looking for more kitchen designs – completely blocking out the fish tank thought, not even up for consideration at this moment. Trolling through the web I come across one picture that changes EVERYTHING.
So the next conversation goes a little something like this:
Me: Primo, done, bring the fish tank over immediately I’m installing it at my house.
Cousin: Oh alright cool bro, in the living room?
Me: Nope, in my kitchen in front of the sink.
Cousin: What do you mean?
Me: Listen there is no time for all this back and forth, just bring me your fish tank. ASAP.
Cousin: Bro, it’s not even ready to move I have fish and corals still there waiting for my 1000 gallon.
Me: FML, fine I’ll wait and build the fish room while you get yours up and running but I want it here ASAP!
From that moment on building out the kitchen became, building out the fish room to get it ready for the kitchen. Within hours I went from a No! to a HELL YEAH!!:bounce2:.
As I’ve gone through some of the building process, I find myself daydreaming about all the possibilities and all the things I can do. I end up staring at an empty dirty fish tank, daydreaming about “watching” the fish swim around while I am cooking or just sitting at the peninsula drinking a beer, getting lost for hours endlessly interacting with fish. Maybe I’ll name them, maybe they’ll have these cool personalities, and maybe they will recognize me when I walk by from all the time I’ll be spending with them.
Then I snap out of it and realize that I’m still another month or so away from even getting it filled with water. So for now I’m trying to build a BAMF fish room that will make my life as simple as possible so I can spend some great quality getting to know all the fish that I will put in there.
I owe this new found addiction and will probably owe many more thank yous to several people but let’s start with these.
Saving the best for last, none of this would have been possible if it weren’t for Rick selling my cousin on the idea of having a 210 gallon in his house, if Ian hadn’t presented my cousin with a once in a lifetime opportunity with the 1000 gallon tank, if the mastermind and one of a kind Peter Diaz from Great Ocean Aquariums hadn’t been a part of these builds, and if my cousin had not wanted to keep this tank in the family.
The stars were aligned, so….. without further or do…
The rest of the story goes a little something like this (in pictures)…
After some design ideas, I went ahead and cut the hole where the tank will be.
Untitled by Lester Rodriguez, on Flickr
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