New and Foolish !
New and Foolish !
Greetings All,
New and Foolish. Almost a year ago, stopped into a local Woodcraft Store in Michigan and saw a beautiful reef aquarium. Of course like most here, have an appreciation for the little things going on and planted the seed. Over the past year decided to do a salt water SPS reef tank. Started toying with the design .... bad habit for an engineer. So like jumping out of a perfectly good air plane to sky dive, I jumped into things with both feet. So I bought my first tank ... 6'x3'x3' with good intentions of setting this one up and get things working. Then from months of reading books and RC forums (almost every night for hours) and information, only to learn I need to learn a heck of a lot more. As you learn and understand, the set up and systems can become complicated. It is an art as much as it is a science. No one person has the right answer (as there isn't one), just lots of MHOs. Well, as you get into it, you see others and their incredible systems and the efforts put into them. You know you can have a love/hate relationsip from someone you never met, lol .... thanks David Saxby, who has a world renowned aquarium to inspire anyone and for saying "put in the biggest tank you can fit and afford" (I heard the first part of that, now the second part ... the jury is still out ... and not sure they want to come back, lol). As an creative engineer (a bad combination for this hobby), things change (almost everyday) and MORPHED into a creature with its own agenda. Thanks to Dave Saxby's comment, the 330g was the ultimate aquarium for the space. The worked involved in setting it up as a "temporary" tank for a year or two and all the associated incidental work, then have to tear it down and move it and install a new one, meant the new one would probably never happen if I did that. Plus as you learn, you need more than one system to adequately do justice to this hobby (to get things going, quarantine, frag tank, and for isolation purposes) ... which then requires you to find a room (or basement) to convert to hide all the stuff that make the pretty display tank look beautiful. So, as it took two months of design revisions before reaching the final Display tank design (custom starfire 8'-4" bow front with an irregular multi-side design width varies from 32"-64" and height of 34") and size of 525g of water with an intended additional 400g custom sump and refugium in the basement. The tank is now ordered and the front bow is in production, with final details of the coast to coast and hole locations to be determined. So as I said, this nice little creature has metamorphosed into a bit of a monster. Hence I have name the main display tank "Morpheus", which can have a number of meanings and inferences such as loosely translated from Greek methodology as the "Gods of Dreams" and the "Shaper of Dreams" (whose true semblance is that of a winged daemon, imagery shared with many of his siblings - his brothers Phobetor and Phantasos being responsible for animals and inanimate objects, respectively). It is a challenge to this undertaking, and it is being fast tracked as the two builds are simultaneously underway. A friend warned me not to do this (he has been an aquarist for over 15 years) ... thinks I should have listened before I jumped off the cliff.
Anyhow, that is my introduction for now. Will be starting a thread post of the builds, engineering and research involved, pertinent questions to every aspect of the system, with CAD drawings and photographs of the progress. Hoping to learn from many of you. Have gained a lot of valuable insight from so many of your postings and comments. Some of which I have already exchanged several emails and appreciated your responses.
Joe from Belle River (Windsor) Ontario (which is across from Detroit Michigan).
Thanks in advance.
:fun2:
