Congratulations to dkeller_nc on this worthy honor. Apologies for running late this month on my part and thanks to Jack aka sirreal63 for helping convert the pictures for this format!
First let me say thank you to those that nominated me for this honor. It came as quite a surprise to me, as I've not been a member of RC very long and really don't feel I've done anything to deserve it.
My name is David, and been an aquajunkie since I was a really little kid collecting turtles and native fish from a creek behind my childhood home. Those of you that are -ahem- "mature" might remember the ubiquitous ten gallon tanks with chrome frames, slate bottoms, black sealant and hot incandescent bulbs. That was my first tank, and I still have it as a museum piece.
Aquatic husbandry was in its infancy back then, and I'm grateful to have left the little clear plastic air-driven plastic filter boxes with glass wool and cheap carbon behind. I moved on to keeping and breeding the usual barbs, tetras, South American dwarf cichlids, African cichlids, and in my opinion the jewel of the freshwater world, killifish.
My first experience with saltwater wasn't a good one. I acquired a 55 gallon tank in the 1970's and went the route of the best advice there was back then - undergravel filters with crushed coral, floating hydrometers, instant ocean, and flakes and frozen brine for food. Sadly, none of the fish would survive for more than a month or two at best. I didn't know it then, but the reason is that most of the fish in the pet stores in the infancy of the saltwater hobby were collected with cyanide, so the deck was stacked against the saltwater hobbyist from the start.
So I gave up on saltwater, but I never forgot the bright colors and cool shapes of the fishes, and when the FAMA and TFH magazines started covering the coral reef methods of the Berlin school in the late 1980s, I knew I had to give it another chance.
My first reef tank in 1990 was laughable - a 15 gallon high with a "skilter" for a protein skimmer, a small powerhead, live rock from the carribean, and a royal gramma for a piscine inhabitant. The corals were simple zoas and various polyps, open brains, and mushrooms. Simple though it was, I was utterly and completely hooked.
Most of you are familiar with this, but this little tank started something that got way out of hand - 4 reef tanks in the 1990s ranging from that little 15 gallon "nano" to my largest, a 90 gallon bare-bottom reef with 200 lbs of live rock from the keys, metal halide and VHO lighting, powerful Iwaki pump and venturi protein skimming. The life in that tank really did amazingly well - the stony corals doubled in size every few months, and the pair of black cap basslets regularly spawned.
All that changed with the arrival of hurricane Fran in 1996. Two weeks without power annihilated everything in the tanks, including several large Tridacnas that I'd had for years.
So I took some time off, but there wasn't really any question that the tanks would get set back up again, except this time with some generator backup. I built the 20 gallon tank you see in some of the pictures in 2004, and it's been running continuously since then. It's a very simple tank that started with drip jugs for kalkwasser, a 1980's era Tunze centrifugal protein skimmer, an eheim hobby pump, compact fluorescent lighting and a zoo med powersweep circulation pump. I've only recently upgraded the circulation to hydor Koralias last March, and put an ATO in place last weekend.
Despite the tank's simplicity, SPS corals do exceptionally well. They are moved out to other tanks as they get too large, but the current star of the tank is fuzzy blue acropora that has grown explosively and been "pruned" many times. "MPS" corals such as lettuce corals and pipe organs also do quite well in this tank. I describe this for those that might be reading this that are just getting into the hobby. There is no doubt that setting up even a small reef like this can be quite an expenditure, but this little 20 gallon should encourage you - you definitely don't have to have the latest and greatest to have success with corals and related reef life.
Nevertheless, this tank also has its challenges. My temptation was to tear it apart and scrub out all of the nuisance algae and nuke the pesky xenia for the photo session. But in the end, I decided to photograph the tank, warts and all, simply to show that even those of us that have been doing this for a very long time have to occasionally battle cyano, valonia, etc...
The last picture is of a 50 gallon cube that is my foray into a "high tech" rimless tank equipped with LED lights, vortech pumps, highly-functioning oversized needle wheel skimmer, dosing pumps and controller. This one is totally an SPS tank, and has been going since April. Time will tell if it is as successful as the simpler methods of drip jugs, fluorescent/halide lighting and water testing.
Fianlly, let me say what Reef Central has done for me. As I said in the introduction, I'm a recent member. My motivation for joining is that I thought my educational background as a scientist and my experiences (good and bad!) in reefkeeping might be helpful to those that are just getting into this hobby. I do very much remember some of the struggles I went through with the learning curve in keeping some of these animals, and my wish would be to in some small way help others going through the same thing.
But what I didn't expect is what I've learned, and I've learned a lot in less than a year on RC. Just one example is carbon dosing - I was unfamiliar with the technique, but after reading up on it on RC, I've been freed from what most of us old-timers remember as the really intractable problem in reefkeeping - nitrate buildup. Having this issue solved without the drudgery and ineffectiveness of dilution by water changes was huge in my mind.
In closing, let me thank the members and moderators of Reef Central again for this honor. I definitely look forward to participating in the forums for years to come.
David
First let me say thank you to those that nominated me for this honor. It came as quite a surprise to me, as I've not been a member of RC very long and really don't feel I've done anything to deserve it.
My name is David, and been an aquajunkie since I was a really little kid collecting turtles and native fish from a creek behind my childhood home. Those of you that are -ahem- "mature" might remember the ubiquitous ten gallon tanks with chrome frames, slate bottoms, black sealant and hot incandescent bulbs. That was my first tank, and I still have it as a museum piece.
Aquatic husbandry was in its infancy back then, and I'm grateful to have left the little clear plastic air-driven plastic filter boxes with glass wool and cheap carbon behind. I moved on to keeping and breeding the usual barbs, tetras, South American dwarf cichlids, African cichlids, and in my opinion the jewel of the freshwater world, killifish.
My first experience with saltwater wasn't a good one. I acquired a 55 gallon tank in the 1970's and went the route of the best advice there was back then - undergravel filters with crushed coral, floating hydrometers, instant ocean, and flakes and frozen brine for food. Sadly, none of the fish would survive for more than a month or two at best. I didn't know it then, but the reason is that most of the fish in the pet stores in the infancy of the saltwater hobby were collected with cyanide, so the deck was stacked against the saltwater hobbyist from the start.
So I gave up on saltwater, but I never forgot the bright colors and cool shapes of the fishes, and when the FAMA and TFH magazines started covering the coral reef methods of the Berlin school in the late 1980s, I knew I had to give it another chance.
My first reef tank in 1990 was laughable - a 15 gallon high with a "skilter" for a protein skimmer, a small powerhead, live rock from the carribean, and a royal gramma for a piscine inhabitant. The corals were simple zoas and various polyps, open brains, and mushrooms. Simple though it was, I was utterly and completely hooked.
Most of you are familiar with this, but this little tank started something that got way out of hand - 4 reef tanks in the 1990s ranging from that little 15 gallon "nano" to my largest, a 90 gallon bare-bottom reef with 200 lbs of live rock from the keys, metal halide and VHO lighting, powerful Iwaki pump and venturi protein skimming. The life in that tank really did amazingly well - the stony corals doubled in size every few months, and the pair of black cap basslets regularly spawned.
All that changed with the arrival of hurricane Fran in 1996. Two weeks without power annihilated everything in the tanks, including several large Tridacnas that I'd had for years.
So I took some time off, but there wasn't really any question that the tanks would get set back up again, except this time with some generator backup. I built the 20 gallon tank you see in some of the pictures in 2004, and it's been running continuously since then. It's a very simple tank that started with drip jugs for kalkwasser, a 1980's era Tunze centrifugal protein skimmer, an eheim hobby pump, compact fluorescent lighting and a zoo med powersweep circulation pump. I've only recently upgraded the circulation to hydor Koralias last March, and put an ATO in place last weekend.
Despite the tank's simplicity, SPS corals do exceptionally well. They are moved out to other tanks as they get too large, but the current star of the tank is fuzzy blue acropora that has grown explosively and been "pruned" many times. "MPS" corals such as lettuce corals and pipe organs also do quite well in this tank. I describe this for those that might be reading this that are just getting into the hobby. There is no doubt that setting up even a small reef like this can be quite an expenditure, but this little 20 gallon should encourage you - you definitely don't have to have the latest and greatest to have success with corals and related reef life.
Nevertheless, this tank also has its challenges. My temptation was to tear it apart and scrub out all of the nuisance algae and nuke the pesky xenia for the photo session. But in the end, I decided to photograph the tank, warts and all, simply to show that even those of us that have been doing this for a very long time have to occasionally battle cyano, valonia, etc...
The last picture is of a 50 gallon cube that is my foray into a "high tech" rimless tank equipped with LED lights, vortech pumps, highly-functioning oversized needle wheel skimmer, dosing pumps and controller. This one is totally an SPS tank, and has been going since April. Time will tell if it is as successful as the simpler methods of drip jugs, fluorescent/halide lighting and water testing.
Fianlly, let me say what Reef Central has done for me. As I said in the introduction, I'm a recent member. My motivation for joining is that I thought my educational background as a scientist and my experiences (good and bad!) in reefkeeping might be helpful to those that are just getting into this hobby. I do very much remember some of the struggles I went through with the learning curve in keeping some of these animals, and my wish would be to in some small way help others going through the same thing.
But what I didn't expect is what I've learned, and I've learned a lot in less than a year on RC. Just one example is carbon dosing - I was unfamiliar with the technique, but after reading up on it on RC, I've been freed from what most of us old-timers remember as the really intractable problem in reefkeeping - nitrate buildup. Having this issue solved without the drudgery and ineffectiveness of dilution by water changes was huge in my mind.
In closing, let me thank the members and moderators of Reef Central again for this honor. I definitely look forward to participating in the forums for years to come.
David
