Hello R2R community, My name is brad and I am returning to saltwater reef keeping after a 9 year hiatus and this is my story. I was very active in reef communities for about 10 years when a move took out a large portion of my corals, also my 50 breeder breaking in the move was enough to put me out of the game for a while... So this is the start of me coming back. I have dug out my old equipment and washed off all my old dead live rock 2, 5 gal buckets overfull with prime choice Fiji, Tonga, and great shaped rocks I had accumulated over 10 years of reefing... all of it dead and bleached out. kinda sad but I was very happy to wash off the dust and get it wet again. I purchased a 20 long and 4, 4.4 gal jugs of "live water" and a bag of oolithic "live" sand. i dug out an old cpr backpack and jerry rigged up a maxi-jet 1200 to run it. then came the fun of trying to fit as much of my old dead rock into the tank as possible. the goal....get life back into the live rock in preparation for a larger aquarium setup. once there is enough life to support a reef in my rock. i added a few small pieces of live rock from 2 different pet stores in the area to "seed " the tank and rock with life. I am now 6 weeks into the reseeding of my rock and the cycle went smooth and i have since started feeding the addiction of corals in the tank. i have some green palythoa and a small frag of zoanthids one purple mushroom w/ random zoe hanger on the frag circle. I am very much in love with being back in the scene again and am very addicted. I have since purchased a system from someone that was moving and couldn't move his equipment... the purchase is a dream come true. 65 gal custom tank 4' long 65.. it has a custom compartmented sump with an aqua-c 120 skimmer all the pumps, stand, lighting is a hamelton 2x 150w hqi with 2 96w compact florescent and 4 moon light led. the system has a auto top off system a 1/2 horse chiller and a dual reactor setup for charcoal and carbon. all for a very good price of 600$ I am super excited to get this system up and running but....i have to move out of my condo to do so ..lol i live on a second floor condo and cant have a 800 pound tank there....needless to say house hunting for a new home for myself and my new tank oh and the rest of my family. :angel: i have hooked the sump and skimmer up to my 20 long and have dialed in the skimmer. crazy over skimming but i couldn't help it. currently i am looking for ways to put inexpensive light over my 20 until i can get moved and the 65 set up. currently i am running a 24 watt compact florescent in the form of a ott light... i have a few old 660 icecap ballasts laying around i am going to hook up as a temp fix if i cant find a new home soon. so anyway Iam taking lots of pics of my journey as a good reef keeper should. I may post them in a thread at a later date... but for now i will settle for saying hello R2R im super happy to be back in this hobby and hope to meet and share frags/storys/tales/experience with some of you in the future... beradd ps sorry about the bad punctuation and paragraphing. never was good at word programs.:sorry:
