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View Full Version : Hello all...making the leap to reef keeping.


mmittlesteadt
03/05/2015, 06:03 PM
I'm new to this forum, though not entirely new to fresh or saltwater aquariums.

I'm 54 and have been keeping fish for at least 35 years. I once managed two pet stores in Central Wisconsin and we kept a wide variety of freshwater tanks and kept some saltwater supplies in stock, though we did not sell or maintain saltwater tanks.

I'm a very experienced freshwater enthusiast but I'm I'm a bit of a novice to saltwater, mainly reef tanks. I've had a couple of saltwater tanks a few years back. Nothing fabulous like some of these tanks I see on here. My last little fish/reef tank I had was stocked with live rock and ended up in disaster because of one little inhabitant that came along with my live rock...a mantis shrimp. Ugh. Needless to say I left the hobby of saltwater for a while.

I now work at a store that has a huge, very well managed and maintained pet store with a great devoted and educated staff, with two being saltwater experts. They stock absolutely everything related to saltwater. The benefit to me as an employee at this store is I can buy everything at cost.

To make an already long story short, I now have the means to back into reef keeping and this time I am going to take my sweet time with it, learn as much as I can here, from books and my fellow employees in the pet department as well as every pertinent thread here I can find.

I do not have the space for a large tank, so I'm going with a 40 gallon breeder tank. My plan is to keep a few small fish and only soft corals. I'm going to forego a sump (again, limited space). I already purchased an Eshopps PSK-100 protein skimmer for it, a Bulk Reef Supply 4 Stage RO/DI System (@ 75GPD) and I have a 3 foot dual bulb flourescent light fixture but plan on getting two 3 foot LED fixtures from work.

I will scour the threads here and learn as much as I can. I've been lurking here for a month or so already. I'm not going to even bother filling the tank until I have everything I need for equipment and supplies and have taken more time to learn. The saltwater tanks we have at work are sufficiently stocked with coral frags and fish that constantly draw my attention.

So I look forward to picking everyone's brain here and being as patient as one can be.

gone fishin
03/05/2015, 06:09 PM
:wave: Welcome to the forum. What store are you at? I am always up for road trip to a Store I have not been to.

mmittlesteadt
03/05/2015, 06:22 PM
:wave: Welcome to the forum. What store are you at? I am always up for road trip to a Store I have not been to.

Ace Hardware in Weston, WI. Weird that a hardware store has a pet department, but it's quite large and it's the biggest department in sales there. We have the largest fish department out of any pet stores in Central WI. We just added 8 new 40 gallon long saltwater tanks, three new 220 gallon tanks (albeit freshwater, but they are thinking of turning one of them into a fish only saltwater tank for the larger SW fish), in addition to all the tanks they had before. I don't know how many 75 and 120 gallon tanks they have now...I lost track, in addition to all the typical 20 and 30 gallon tanks for small fish.

gone fishin
03/05/2015, 06:36 PM
Nice, I will have to check it. we went to a Ace in Reedsburg I believe, that had a few tanks and lots of supplies.

TangingOut
03/05/2015, 06:51 PM
Ace hardware is in the aquarium game?

mmittlesteadt
03/05/2015, 08:50 PM
Ace hardware is in the aquarium game?

Ours is part of the chain, but independently owned. We have a huge pet department...takes up nearly 1/4 of the floorspace in a rather large industrial sized building.

I run the Frame shop and gallery there. We are quite diversified.

kenpau
03/06/2015, 08:48 AM
I'm new to this forum, though not entirely new to fresh or saltwater aquariums.

I'm 54 and have been keeping fish for at least 35 years. I once managed two pet stores in Central Wisconsin and we kept a wide variety of freshwater tanks and kept some saltwater supplies in stock, though we did not sell or maintain saltwater tanks.

I'm a very experienced freshwater enthusiast but I'm I'm a bit of a novice to saltwater, mainly reef tanks. I've had a couple of saltwater tanks a few years back. Nothing fabulous like some of these tanks I see on here. My last little fish/reef tank I had was stocked with live rock and ended up in disaster because of one little inhabitant that came along with my live rock...a mantis shrimp. Ugh. Needless to say I left the hobby of saltwater for a while.

I now work at a store that has a huge, very well managed and maintained pet store with a great devoted and educated staff, with two being saltwater experts. They stock absolutely everything related to saltwater. The benefit to me as an employee at this store is I can buy everything at cost.

To make an already long story short, I now have the means to back into reef keeping and this time I am going to take my sweet time with it, learn as much as I can here, from books and my fellow employees in the pet department as well as every pertinent thread here I can find.

I do not have the space for a large tank, so I'm going with a 40 gallon breeder tank. My plan is to keep a few small fish and only soft corals. I'm going to forego a sump (again, limited space). I already purchased an Eshopps PSK-100 protein skimmer for it, a Bulk Reef Supply 4 Stage RO/DI System (@ 75GPD) and I have a 3 foot dual bulb flourescent light fixture but plan on getting two 3 foot LED fixtures from work.

I will scour the threads here and learn as much as I can. I've been lurking here for a month or so already. I'm not going to even bother filling the tank until I have everything I need for equipment and supplies and have taken more time to learn. The saltwater tanks we have at work are sufficiently stocked with coral frags and fish that constantly draw my attention.

So I look forward to picking everyone's brain here and being as patient as one can be.

Welcome and a thanks for a great post! It's nice to see new reefers (albeit with a lot of fish experience) planning and researching and not just jumping in. I'm sure you've realised already from your past tanks and by talking to colleagues that the more you plan your system the more success you are likely to have. Looking forward to seeing your reef come together :)

Pruss
03/06/2015, 10:27 AM
Thanks for your post.

We're in a similar place. I've been keeping freshwater tanks for 30+ years and have also just made the decision to get salty.

I just bought my tank, a used 79g starfire rimless tank. It will make a nice, shallow, rimless reef. Over the next couple months as I slowly build up my kit I'll start a build thread on my first reef. I hope you'll do the same. It would be fun to compare notes with and learn from you.

Have fun!

-- Pat

FraggledRock
03/06/2015, 11:31 AM
What i learned was to forget everything I knew about freshwater or brackish water, to grasp the reef thing.

Good Luck!

mmittlesteadt
03/06/2015, 03:52 PM
Thanks. And yes, I'm quite aware there are differences between fresh and saltwater aquariums.

However, there are also a lot of similarities. Patience being one of them. Also, I am an avid defender of the life we care for. I find life in all it's many forms to be significant, and to me, even a snail has the right to live a full and healthy life just as much as any fish or coral does. So I take a lot of pride in understanding their needs to ensure success for their sake, not mine.

I didn't keep simple freshwater tanks. I mostly kept large biotope tanks, faithfully created to recreate the natural world from where the inhabitants came from. I've had huge tanks with breeding pairs of Oscars (talk about having to keep a tank clean!), An enormous, fully planted tank with over 100 schooling Cardinal Tetras and 4 huge Altum Angels that after careful planning was almost maintenance free. I've also kept Discus in planted tanks, back when keeping Discus really were only for more advanced fishkeepers. Even at that, freshwater tanks are far more forgiving of a lot of things where reef tanks are not. I understand that.

Yes, my new reef system will be a process. And actually, since I'm getting the right equipment from the get go, and not skimping, I am really enjoying the process of learning and taking my time. I'm in no rush to even fill it with water.

And yes, I will start a thread on it. Right now I'm looking through the aquascaping threads. Being an artist, I really enjoy the design and layout aspect, not only with the rockwork but in thinking about how it could look in the future after grow out and planning that part as well.

At the moment I am fixing up a beat up stand I got dirt cheap. I'm building a simple liftoff canopy for it and will add some extra trim and use a faux finish technique to dress it up. When I'm done with that, the stand will look very high end, for very little cost. I'm sticking my money (which is significant, even at cost with my discount) into the big ticket items like the RODI unit, lighting and protein skimmer.

I'm sure I will post asking a lot of question many will find rather remedial, but I enjoy gathering information as much as anything else about it. I have an entire library of freshwater (and some saltwater) books already and plan on getting more.