Who are the SPS Veterans?

Hey Lawrence,

Im up late, cant sleep. Have not checked out Reef Central since February. A local customer who is somewhat new to SPS stopped by today and mentioned this thread. Speaking about the real old days. I can remember Mike Paletta sleeping on a chair in the living room of my small apartment in Brentwood (Los Angeles). He would stop by when travelling the west coast. That was 93, 94 and 95. Mike would pick up sps fragments and small sps colonies and hand carry them back home. Back in those days even Richard Harker would stop by every now and then and pick up some sps frags and colonies. Apparently I may have been the only nut in the Los Angeles area that was keeping them at the time. Of course there was also Jeff MaCare of H20 tropicals down in the Orange County area. One of the early stores to keep and sell sps was called I believe Sandys Pet Shop in Louisville. Bruce Davidson was running the store. Another store was called Country Critters in New Jersey I think ? And there was Kevin Gaines and Kelly Hunter a few years before taking off to Florida and joining ORA.
 
Bob,

I think I rambled on for over 2 hours during that presentation. Luckily they had an open bar nearby. Afterwards I was talking to people who had left my presentation, had a few drinks, walked back into the room and were shocked to see that I was still talking about sps. Thats when I learned to keep the number of slides down to just 1 carousel. Unfortunately the RTN that hit the following year in 1996 made me feel a little bad about talking about sps in 1995. Perhaps we were getting a little ahead of ourselves. That combined with a large company threatening me with a lawsuit if I spoke about RTN in public made the summer of 1996 stressful to say the least. Luckily those problems are far behind us.
 
Have fun with the thread. I am off to get some rest and then back to work. Here are some other old time names for you from California. Bob Mankin, Gregg Cook, Mitch Boley and Tapio Haaparanta. It may be difficult to find someone who has kept an sps stony reef constantly running for 10 or more years. There are numerous reasons for this. Ten years ago you could not even buy a calcium reactor. Additionally, the real nasty RTN problem that occurred in 1996 and on into 1997 really took out a lot of reefs. Unfortunately many people back then became discouraged and tore down their reefs. I have heard however of a mainly sps reef that is stated to have been setup and running for more then 10 years. I think it is located in Texas, possibly Houston. Apparently the colonies had gotten incredibly large. I heard about that reef 2 to 3 year ago. My first all SPS reef was setup in 1993. Unfortunately since then I have moved basically three times. The good part about moving and setting up new reefs is you get to incorporate everything you learned during the last reef. Right now I have 5 sps reef systems going and my hands are full.
 
What's up Steve? 5:01am and you're still up? You are turning into me dude. Many thanks to golfish for getting me into SPS corals. Many thanks to ROAB, turtlespd and ST for turning me into an addict. - Ali
 
Steve,

What a shock to hear you say that someone in Houston has one of the oldest SPS reefs. You could be right now that I think about it. The guy you are talking about goes by Twinspot on Houston's local reef club, but rarely frequents any boards. He has been known to outgrow his corals all the time and has to sell these huge colonies in order to start over again with that piece in his tank. He has a 200g. I did see his tank not too long ago and was truly amazed at how established his tank was. He even had a unique staghorn (combination of stags) grow out side that I've only seen in Mr. N's Japanese tank (www.reefaqua.com). That was such a beautiful sight! One thing that saddens me is that he plans to take down that tank within a yr to downgrade to a 120 for some reason. So this reef could soon be gone!

Other people that I know in Houston who have been pioneers are Kevin and SueT.
 
What's up Steve? 5:01am and you're still up? You are turning into me dude. Many thanks to golfish for getting me into SPS corals. Many thanks to ROAB, turtlespd and ST for turning me into an addict. - Ali
Click to expand...


ali,
will you be my friend again? :lol:
 
Invincible569,

That might be the reefer I heard about. Before he downsizes his reef it would be great if someone can get some pictures of the reef. Like you stated, it would be interested to see how these sps reefs look after 10 years or longer. I remember Bruce Carlson showing a long term small sps reef experiment. They were using a flow through system and the sps eventually grew into a solid block and filled the tank. Obviouslly regular pruning needs to be done to prevent that situation from occurring.
 
Ali,

Yeah I tell everyone that I am living on South Pacific Time. Just not living in the South Pacific. Almost forgot another old time California sps name: Leonard Ho. Mike Paletta's book Ultimate Marine Aquariums is a really good basic guide into the mid to late 1990's US SPS reef keepers. There are quite a few stony reefs in there. At least half of those sps reefkeepers got some of their sps corals through me between 1994 and 1996. Back when I started fragging sps in late 1993, you could count the number of serious SPS reefkeepers in the US on your fingers and toes.
 
Hey Steve-
I'd bet that some of the corals in my old system, in Paletta's book, and my new one, probably came from you. I got quite a few from Kurt back in the early 90's, and from Mike Paletta in the mid to late 90's. I haven't heard from Kurt since about 98 or 99, but I know he still lives in the Cleveland area.

BTW I was one of those that made a few trips to the bar during your presentation at MACNA 7:D

I know Bruce Davidson pretty well ( I work with his brother) They just had a storm tear the roof off their new store and are in the process of rebuilding.
 
I bought 11 or so Solomon Island aquacultured corals from Bob Mankin back in '97 and still have all of them today. My first all coral tank was a 90 gal with 175W 14,000K Belgium bulbs set up in 1996. As they grow I just keep getting bigger and more tanks :)

Regards,
Kevin
 
Kevinpro,

Mankin had the line on some awesome Solomons Cultured corals in 1997 to 1998. I was not that excited about disks and was trying to get the broken off branches from the exporter in 1997/1998. Seemed odd to me to have them break a branch, glue it to a disk and then wait until it readapted and started to grow and then ship it to me. Heck, just send me the broken off branch. I will do the glueing. I guess though the idea was to give the natives some work. Me and Bob meet with the Solomons exporter during that 'International Macna 10' in Los Angeles in 1998. Bob ran with the Solomons but I was still recovering from the 1996 RTN catastrophe. Bob did well until the Civil war in the Solomons began and Bob's wife also developed health problems at that time.

SPStoner

Sorry to read that a storm damaged Bruce's store. There has been some real bad ones this year. I drove my sisters moving truck across country a couple of months ago and ran into some rain in Oklahoma that was intense. Worse then the El Nino rains we get every now and then in Southern California. Actually I may have started buying for Kurt even way back in late 1993 and 1994.
 
Hi Steve,
Thanks for the background info. The ones I got were tied to the cement disks with monofilament. There were two small holes in the disk for the line to pass through and be tied on the back. I thought it was a very novel idea at the time but they proved difficult to place in the rockwork and as they grew became quite top heavy and tended to tip.

Here is one of those Solomon beauties:

See you next month :)
Kevin

6747Loripes-1-03.JPG
 
Wow... is that a PM?

So far I've only seen frags... to see a whole colony of it is breathtaking... :eek:

If it isn't a PM then it's still an awesome coral.
 
I'm no longer sure of what it is. At one time I thought it was A. loripes but now I'm not so sure. It definately could be but maybe not :lol:

Regards,
Kevin
 
Project Reef said:
What's up Steve? 5:01am and you're still up? You are turning into me dude. Many thanks to golfish for getting me into SPS corals. Many thanks to ROAB, turtlespd and ST for turning me into an addict. - Ali
Click to expand...

LOL, Ali your killing me.....I think your tuning into a vampire.

I know ROAB doesn't rememebr this but I thik I sent him his first sps:rolleyes:
 
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