[slief]

It’s been along time since I posted an update to this thread. Up until very recently the tank had been in cruise control with not much new to update. Livestock was all doing well and coral all doing well. We very recently made a decision to sell our home & move Montana and finally found a home this last December that we really like on a great 1.58 acre riverfront property in a killer location. We flew out there December 21st to check it out. We put our offer in on December 23 and found out Christmas Eve just as our plane landed back in LA (still on the tarmac) that our offer was accepted. It was the best Christmas gift ever! I already had our house out here on the market. New Year’s Eve we got an offer on the house here that we couldn’t refuse but the buyers did not want the tank. Livestock was sold very quickly and within a handful of days the tank was drained and removed from the wall and construction began to reassemble the fish room back into a bedroom.

This weekend we pack up the house, load the truck and drive off into the sunset to our new riverfront home in Montana just outside of Whitefish. It’s long been my dream (over 30 years of dreaming) to move to Western Montana and it seems as though dreams do come true. Back in the early 80’s I went to boarding school in Western Montana and I’ve wanted to move there ever since. This place has a great river (Stillwater river) running right through the back yard. There is lower Stillwater lake 1000’ up stream and we are in the middle of the Stillwater national forest yet we have an airport, Costco, Walmart, Best Buy etc all with 25-30 minutes from us in Kalispell Mt. A ski resort in Whitefish is 15 minutes away and Glacier National Park 35 minutes away. Terrific fly fishing for big native trout and pike in my backyard and a lake packed with all kinds of fish basically next door. Cost of living is a fraction of what it is out here which will put years back on my life due to stress reduction and I get to enjoy 4 real seasons.

I’ve got my dream property but the house is kind of a nightmare but I knew that going in. It’s a fixer upper that was priced right. The property owner is carrying us for a couple years and we put a very minimal down payment. The upside is that once we finish the remodel, we will be in a VERY equitable position on the place.The house was foreclosed on a year and a half ago and left empty for the last year and a half so it needs a lot of work. A realtor bought it last year with the plans of doing it but decided not to and put it on the market.

I flew out there this last week and remove walls drywall ceilings insulation etc. to begin the process of a full remodel and get it ready for our move in. A lot of progress was made during the 6 days I was out there but the remodel will take me several months or more to complete as I will be doing most of the work myself. There will likely be a reef tank in the future but it will be at least a year out & it likely won’t be as large due to the floor plan and crawl space below the house instead of a concrete slab foundation.

I will remain active on the forum and will be here daily as I always enjoy helping others and I will continue to work for Royal Excluvis as well as my other aquarium related endeavors. You can subscribe to my Youtube channel to see what I am doing in Montana (including the remodel) and follow along on some of my new adventures out there of which there will be many.

Below is the final video of my reef tank. A video showing my new back yard as well as a picture of the house both taken this last week.

So this is my final video on my reef tank. This was taken a couple weeks ago.




Here is a video I took last week showing our new backyard. I love the snow in case you were wondering.