Background:
Circa 2002 I, like many, started with 10g tanks focused on guppies/mollies etc in my first apartment as an alternative to my lifestyle of dogs, drums, and loud guitars. I was 19. That grew into a 35g hex, cichlid focused tank with locally sourced aquaculture and some interesting sticklebacks. Eventually things converted to salt. I custom built a 40g bow with a 20g refugium and jumped into seahorses. I frequently got the "you can't captive breed seahorses" from all the LFS, and so of course I started captive breeding seahorses. Zosterae being my favorite and preferred, I had a brief stint with Reidi's as well.
After well over a decade out of the hobby, my wife set up a 10g upright "toy" tank (like a petco bargain) which I stayed very clear of, knowing what would happen if I took any interest at all. After some time her goldfish had passed, and she was looking at starting the tank over. I think we must have been at the bar across the street because I said why not convert it to a nano saltwater tank?
"Isn't that a lot more work?".............
na.
Oh geez I have forgotten more than I ever knew.
The 10g became a passion of ours. it grew very healthy, our corals were growing like crazy, and then we took on a Cyano bloom while on vacation. Gross!
Luckily my LFS was very helpful, AND a co-worker had this "30g" tank + stand she wanted to give away. I stared at the tank for probably 3 months before committing to it. (I actually need to measure it cause I think it might be larger).
So now we have this.
2 apologies off the bat:
I struggle to take good pictures with my phone, my wife's phone takes better pictures.
I spent the day cleaning, a small water change, etc after I took these pictures, but hey maybe honesty is the best policy.
Our fish, are prized to me.
2 clowns
2 damsels
1 chromis
1 orchid dotty back
1 cleaner shrimp
2 sexy shrimp
2 emerald crabs
X number of bumblbee, nasarious, and turbo snails.
The clowns are coming up on 2 years old since we bought them, and everything seems very happy. I don't really have any desire to add anymore fish to the tank. the bioload seems stable, our hodgepodge of tankmates get along well together and even though my clowns would rather host to my zoas than my anenome, they're happy.
It never occurred to me to start a "log" before, but my zoanthids are growing so fast, and the value of the zoanthids we are buying are increasing, so while we learn various struggles in algae I don't even remember having fought the last time I did this, improve lighting, filtration, count polyp growth etc, I figured a log might make sense.
I'm going to make a lot of mistakes. Despite the success I recall having when I was younger, it feels 100% new.
I'm blown away by the quality of my RedSea 50W LED lights compared to my options 20 years ago!
Circa 2002 I, like many, started with 10g tanks focused on guppies/mollies etc in my first apartment as an alternative to my lifestyle of dogs, drums, and loud guitars. I was 19. That grew into a 35g hex, cichlid focused tank with locally sourced aquaculture and some interesting sticklebacks. Eventually things converted to salt. I custom built a 40g bow with a 20g refugium and jumped into seahorses. I frequently got the "you can't captive breed seahorses" from all the LFS, and so of course I started captive breeding seahorses. Zosterae being my favorite and preferred, I had a brief stint with Reidi's as well.
After well over a decade out of the hobby, my wife set up a 10g upright "toy" tank (like a petco bargain) which I stayed very clear of, knowing what would happen if I took any interest at all. After some time her goldfish had passed, and she was looking at starting the tank over. I think we must have been at the bar across the street because I said why not convert it to a nano saltwater tank?
"Isn't that a lot more work?".............
na.
Oh geez I have forgotten more than I ever knew.
The 10g became a passion of ours. it grew very healthy, our corals were growing like crazy, and then we took on a Cyano bloom while on vacation. Gross!
Luckily my LFS was very helpful, AND a co-worker had this "30g" tank + stand she wanted to give away. I stared at the tank for probably 3 months before committing to it. (I actually need to measure it cause I think it might be larger).
So now we have this.
2 apologies off the bat:
I struggle to take good pictures with my phone, my wife's phone takes better pictures.
I spent the day cleaning, a small water change, etc after I took these pictures, but hey maybe honesty is the best policy.
Our fish, are prized to me.
2 clowns
2 damsels
1 chromis
1 orchid dotty back
1 cleaner shrimp
2 sexy shrimp
2 emerald crabs
X number of bumblbee, nasarious, and turbo snails.
The clowns are coming up on 2 years old since we bought them, and everything seems very happy. I don't really have any desire to add anymore fish to the tank. the bioload seems stable, our hodgepodge of tankmates get along well together and even though my clowns would rather host to my zoas than my anenome, they're happy.
It never occurred to me to start a "log" before, but my zoanthids are growing so fast, and the value of the zoanthids we are buying are increasing, so while we learn various struggles in algae I don't even remember having fought the last time I did this, improve lighting, filtration, count polyp growth etc, I figured a log might make sense.
I'm going to make a lot of mistakes. Despite the success I recall having when I was younger, it feels 100% new.
I'm blown away by the quality of my RedSea 50W LED lights compared to my options 20 years ago!
and that stuck too
