Hello! My name is Sterling, I'm a 26 year old ex-Navy, full-time college student majoring in Marine Biology at Hawaii Pacific University on Oahu. I work part time as a Trop-diver and help run an ornamental fish wholesale business. Fairly new to serious aquarium-ing. My roommate left his 180 gallon empty tank at my house so I adopted it and made it into a fresh water tank. Then I bought a 55 gallon tank after catching a Dragon Eel and now Im going to be converting my 180 into salt. The dimensions on the tank are 96"x26"x18 with a 8"x7.5"26" overflow in each corner, roughly 180 gallons like I said before. Down below I have 48"x21"x12 sump, roughly 55 gallon. Currently my tank, for filtration, has the overflow into bio-ball waterfall then through a sock filter in the sump. When I switch to salt I'm going to install a Red Sea Berlin protein skimmer and a UV filter (although I haven't picked one out yet).
I've learned a lot about fish and their habits and habitat in the wild and now I'd like to learn about their lives in the home aquarium. I have a shopping list of fish I'd like to start out with based on diet and temperament but I'm not sure what the rules are for amount of fish I'll be able to house. Unfortunately, living in Hawaii, I will be only able to have fish and inverts because it is illegal to have coral in a home aquarium here. Lame, I know.
I've learned a lot from this site and it has definitely made me look forward to moving back to the mainland to start my own reef tank. Any advice and criticism is always appreciated.
Thanks for taking the time to read my post!
