Thanks for all the kind words. I'm sure I learn some new things here at R2R. And I hope I can pass along some of what I have learned in 8 years of having fun. For me it started with snorkeling. And now that long weekends in the Florida Keys is just a 4-5 hour drive, we do 3-6 trips a year. That's why I started with aquariums, to have a bit of that snorkel feeling in the house 24/7. Then 2 other factors started to work. First one is, I love to learn about new things. I've had many, many hobbies over the years. Some have been short term, like becoming a private pilot (4 years), and some have been all my life, like photography, sports cars, sports car racing and Formula 1 racing. But what they all have in common was the stuff I needed to learn about each one. And marine aquariums have been a pretty long learning curve. The second hook was my desire to do things with my hands and engineer my own designs. Winter teardowns of my old race car was as much fun, although not nearly as exciting, as racing during the summer. The first 30g tank build was very traditional. The 2nd build was a 75g DT with a 35g hexagon display refugium done back when refugiums were just getting popular. But this 3rd build has some pretty unusual characteristics, like return flow from the sump which is delivered over the back of the tank by 2 returns that alternate via a SCWD and the water is sprayed out into the tank by 2 big spraybars from behind the LR wall. They snake down the inside back wall in a big 'square shaped S' made of 1/2" pvc pipe and with lots of little holes that spray out in about a 45 degree range from up to down but mostly directly out into the backside of the rocks. When I open up the ball valve between the 3200gph sump pump and the SCWD, the flow thru the rocks, blows any sand or detritus off the rocks and corals. It also makes for a nice flow out from behind the rocks and mostly up from under the corals and so far it seems to be working really well.
