[Nanook]

What a journey it has been. The road from there to here has had some bumps and a lot of sharp curves. Sometimes difficult to navigate.
I got my first tank in 2002 while living in Matlacha Florida (near Cape Coral). A 40B and used the Berlin system, whatever that is, for filtration. First mistake was letting the LFS owner convince me to add a Sea Apple. I don’t remember what happened to it but at least it didn’t pollute my tank. Like most beginners, it was a soft coral tank.
In 2004 I decided to move back to my home state of Michigan and in September flew to Michigan and purchased a home in DeWitt. Three weeks later in Florida we got hit by Hurricane Charlie and the 3 day power loss pretty much destroyed the tank. Tried to get a generator but there were none to be had and the tank was gone in 24 hours. Packed up the rock and equipment and moved it and the tank plus my girl friend a dog and a cat to Michigan. Probably the power loss prevented me from killing everything (from the tank – not the GF,cat and dog) on the move. With the house plants in the back of the pickup we found a Gecko when we got to Michigan so, of course, had to get it a home.

Got the tank set back up and cycled the salvaged rock and got it going again. About 2 years later I made my first upgrade to a 90 gallon and added some blue mushrooms, which in a couple years completely overtook the tank. We have a pretty good LFS where I am now and the owner gave me store credit for the mushrooms and new rock for the rock they were attached to. Thus began my move to stonies. After about 3 years I had a beautiful SPS tank so I decided it could be even better if I upgraded to a 180 and it was to go where the 90 was located. I made up several containers of new water for the new tank and in preparation for the upgrade moved all the fish and coral to the containers. I got the new tank set up after a day or two and low and behold lost all the fish except a yellow tang – that I shouldn’t have had in a 90-and coral.
After a year or so, my external skimmer cracked and the next thing I know I had about 15-20 gallons of water on the floor and leaking into the basement and into the finished theater room. The dry wall ceiling came down. The good news was this allowed me to move my sump operation to the basement location. I couldn’t do it before as the plumbing needed to go across the finished room into the unfinished portion of the basement.
I had, unknowingly, been playing Russian roulette and when I added a Powder Blue Tang from my LFS I got hit with a major outbreak of Ick and lost 9 of 11 fish. One of the survivors was the Yellow tang previously mentioned. (One morning I came down stairs and found the poor guy that had survived so much attached to an MP40, didn’t survive that one).
It has been a great journey and I have enjoyed it even with the troubles. Always learning, sometimes too late. Should have done more of what I often advice others to do – read and then read some more.
I don’t even want to talk about my progression with lighting.