history.page

HISTORY

   The Big Reef Project is not "big" in size so much as it is big in it's undertaking. I can't really say that a 34 gallon aquarium is "big" but, the commitment of time and money towards a model of an delicate ocean reef is larger than some might think. This is not a hobby, this is a life style.

INTRODUCTION

    My interest in fish keeping began with my father. In the 1960s my dad's home office always had at least two aquariums set up. I remember the stainless steel frame, black tar sealant, and stainless steel lid. Those tanks were known for leaking electricity in to the water, shortening the lives of the fish. They could also give the owners quite a shock. He put pennies in the tank as a method of parasite control. This was the method of its time.

                Dad, me, and fish tank in my room - 1966

    I remember "helping" him build a hang on the back filter for his 15 gallon show tank. An acrylic box with floss, carbon, and a evaporative cooler pump.   We had to have three filter medium partitions: two so we could rotate old and new floss (to preserve the bio filtration) and one for the carbon. He never used the filter because it kept leaking.

    My dad's office became the family den and the tropical fish gave way to the gold fish we brought home from the school carnival. As many of you know: tropical fish do not live long in close quarters with a bunch of goldfish. Goldfish create too much waste for tropicals to tolerate.

    The aquariums moved to the upstairs bathroom. It was a very large bathroom with a lot of unused space. That space became a managirie of hampsters, mice, and goldfish. Guests would ask why we kept our fish in the bathroom. We told them it was so the fish could be closer to the graveyard. FLUSH!!!!!!!

ON MY OWN

By the time I moved out and went to collage the toilet was no longer a graveyard and the aquariums were dust collectors in the attic. This is when I met my friend Paul at the campus pub. As it turned out one of his many hobbies was fishkeeping. He had a small 10 gallon standard with various tetras and an 18 gallon hexigon with angels.

   I found that time spent watching the fish swimming around the tank was very relaxing. I loved the idea of having a piece of nature as part of my home enviroment. My house plants kept dying so I thought I'd give aquariums a try.

    So, I asked my dad if I could borrow his old ten gallon and try out this fish keeping thing. I cycled the tank with feeder fish (don't do that) and later was advised to move them out to make way for some tetras, mollies and some tiger barbs. They ate the real plants I put in there (so I never did that again), other than that, my first aquarium went really well.

    As I looked around the LFS, I began to get the aquarium bug. I needed a BIGGER tank for more fish. So I bought a 20 gallon tank with a starter kit. Guests would compliment me on my aquascaping, saying it was the nicest tank they had ever seen. At this time I had moved up to discus, but I was not too successful. I found angels to my liking and bought a set of three babies that I had for many years.

REEF FEVER

    Then, at the LFS, I saw my first reef tank. A 200 gallon glass aquarium mounted in a cabinet with a wet/dry filter whirring inside next to a protien skimmer. I could not believe all the life in this tank. I could stand there for an hour and still see something new every minute.

I had to have an aquarium like this. After talking to one of the store employees, I was sure I could gradually put together an aquarium like this. What I couldn't afford I could build. Heck, the store employee drew up a plan for a protien skimmer I could make out of PVC pipe.

Back then (1990) there was no internet. You had to get information the old fashoned way: from books and magazines. But, that cost money! How could I afford to build my reef if I was spending all my college-student-income on books? Brain-picking (asking people with reefs what to do) became my primary source of information.

The first thing I needed was a bigger tank. I checked the newspaper's classified section. There I found an acylic tank, 50 gallons, for $50. Can't beat that! But, when I saw it was a scary-looking DIY-tank I was ready to leave. The seller, desparate for money, sold me a 34 gallon SeaClear with a lighted lid instead.

I set the tank up on an old coffee table I bought at Goodwill. The first inhabitants were Monos . They were like little fighter planes underwater. They were also brackish water fish. I thought I should start with brackist water fish and then work my way up to marine. I don't know why that made sense to me at the time. The Monos evaentually died of a parisite over a holiday weekend when the LFS was closed.

I was about to graduate from college so I packed away the tank with the new cabinet I bought for it, but had not used.

After graduation I moved back to my home town and condenced the contense of my two freshwater tanks into the 34 gallon in the new cabinet. Many fish lived and died there, but "Big A", my largest angel fish, was always there.

   In 1997 I got married and moved into a house. Then another turning event: "Big A", who I had kept for 8 years died in the spring of 1999. I was crushed. He had been the center piece of my tank for so long that without him there was no direction (no theme) for the tank.

   I'm sure this all sounds a little too dramatic, but I had lost interest in my aquarium as a hobby. I had wanted to pass on my interest to my daughter, who loved to look at the fish. My tank need a whole new look - a new direction.

    I sat down on the internet and searched aquarium sites. None of them thrilled me. I didn't want to do a planted aquarium. I don't have a green thumb. So I went through a box of old magazines and equipment I had in the garage. There I found an overflow / prefilter with a 1-1/2" diameter tubing attached to it. Then I remembered my dream of a reef tank.   I found all the books and magazines I had collected nearly 10 years ago.

    I got back on the internet and searched for "reef aquariums".   I found the information and a communittee of people. I needed to know what people were doing now. Were they still using "wet/dry" filters? No?! Good! That will cut the cost.

    I found out about the Berlin Method, the NNR natural methods, Turf Algae Scrubbers, the EcoSystem Method, Live rock, live sand, and all the other basic set-up ideologies. There are as many different ideas in this world about "the right way to set-up and maintain a reef tank" as there are about God.

I believe, at this moment in time, that live rock is a great filter, live sand is a great waste processor and provider of live flora and fona for corals. Algae and sea grasses are nature's primary filter around real reefs, so in a reef tank refugiums must take up this role.

   In the summer of 1999 I put all the information I found important to my reef tank in a 3-ring binder and called it "The Big Reef Project". I believe information is the key to making fewer mistakes. When you are on a tight budget, like me, you can't just "try something" and if it work "great", if it doesn't "oh well, guess I'll just shell out another $1200 to do it this other way".

We owe our captured creatures the most comfortable existance we can create. To do this we hobbyists need to communicate with each other. Share ideas on internet forums, chat rooms, LFSs and clubs. We owe this extra effort to our fish, inverts and fellow aquarians to insure the hobbies continued success with current, new, and future reefers.

My daughter Meghan, Summer 2000