Derek'sReef
Active Member
Hi. Everyone. As you can tell by the title I am addicted to this hobby like most people in this hobby are. I jus realized how much I fell in love with this hobby from the beginning. I started with a freshwater tank and would go to the pet shop and constantly want to buy something. I quickly realized that you cant do that all the time with freshwater but with saltwater you can. I would look at the fish and think it would be so cool to have this fish or that fish and I always thought it would be way too hard to keep up with a saltwater fish tank. I then acquired a second fish tank and was trying to decide what to do with it. I decided I wanted a saltwater tank. I did lots of research, watching videos and reading forums after forums. I seemed to come back to this forum alot with logical answers to my questions. After 3 months of reading I started to realize what I needed and decided I wanted a reef for sure. And if im gonna do it I wanna do it big. Sps and all. At the time my convict cichlids had babies and I traded those 60 babies to a pet shop for 10g of salt. (Lol what a rip off lol). I started with a 55g tank and i decided to go cheap on equipment because I was broke. (I learned that lesson real quick. Buy good equipment). I bout everything very slow. I went with t5 light (4bulb) and a diy pvc overflow. A 20g long sump with a refugium and room for a future skimmer. I took my ten gallons of salt and a. little bit of live rock to seed the little bit of dry rock I had.( I didn't realize how little rock I had till now. I had like 5 pounds of each.) Put them in a ten gallon tank and started to let the rock seed the dry rock. (I was broke and couldn't afford the salt for the 55.) I eventually got enough salt and rock to start the 55. I ended up selling the freshwater tank once and realized how interesting the the saltwater tank was compared to the freshwater. For Christmas and my birthday and when I had extra money I would slowly buy more rock and sand and powerheads and a light and a skimmer. 8 months in I had everything up to date and I found a 90g at a yardsale for $20 that didnt hold water so I sealed it and transferred everything over. I eventually found a mh light on Craig's list and traded some coral for it. Love it. Then 4 months later I found a 180g drilled for $250. (As you can tell I cant pass up a deal.). So I started buying more rock to upgrade to a bigger tank. I am still in that process of buying this for the 180 to upgrade but I cant stop buying corals. I have 40 now. I hqve like 17 sps, 12 lps 8 different zoas and some softies and I just cant get enough. Im actually headed to a frag swap tomorrow and I plan on buying more. I am in love with sps and hammers. I just figured I would share my story and some pics of my progression through this hobby and this forum has helped alot. Now I just have to figure out how to post the pics. Thanks for reading.
Good looking tank!
