This seemed like a very suitable list for this blog.  I’m not actually the original author, and I’ve seen this list in various forms on numerous saltwater forums, so I don’t even know who the original author is so as to give them credit.  I did modify it slightly to suit my own taste.  So, without further ado I present the “how to tell if you’re a reef-a-holic” list:

1. You can’t pass your tank with out giving everything a thorough looking over.

2. You try to approx. the growth of your corals on a daily basis.

3. You can’t walk out of the fish store with out spending at least $200.00

4. You will argue about reef lighting with your dying breath.

5. If you see just one coral with its polyps retracted your mind begins to spin (Alk. Calcium, nitrates, phosphates, emergency water change!!!)

6. You will give up vacations, weekend jaunts and so on because you don’t want to leave your reef.

7. When going for a weekend trip you spend 10 minutes telling the babysitter about your kids and 2 hours about your tank.

8. When you have company coming over the first thing you break out is your algae cleaning magnet.

9. The most exiting thing to happen to you in the last 3 years is the purchase of a tricolor Acro.

10. Once you finally get your reef running perfectly and everything is growing, you begin to make plans for your next tank.

11. You feel genuinely sorry and deep sense of grief when one of your snails dies.

12. You feel a great sense of satisfaction when slippery green stuff grows in a Rubbermaid container and you call it a refugium.

13. You will chase the kids around the house chastising them about leaving the lights on… when you actually need your own substation to power your reef.

I hope you got a chuckle out of those as I did, even if some of them hit a little close to home.

Happy Reefing!

Hello to all. My wife is a bit of a blog-aholic, reading, writing, designing and redesigning blog pages any chance she gets. This, however, will be my first “real-time” foray into the world of blogging. I’m an active member of several online reef aquarium forum style sites. Those tend to be more question and answer related as opposed to blog entries, which I view more as the random ramblings of my mind tied around a general theme.

I suppose the obvious place to start is a little background about myself. My name is Jeff, I’m 39 and I am a reef-aholic. I really can’t pick on my wife too much for her time spent blogging as my addiction takes up just as much free time and costs substantially more to maintain. Seriously though, I’ve been keeping aquaria off and on for about 25 years. My very first tank was a 20-gallon “loaner” aquarium used to conduct a hermit crab behavior study when I was still in school. I lived in Stamford, CT at the time and simply went down to the local beach and came home with some sand, rock and a bunch of hermit crabs. After the paper was written, I enjoyed keeping the critters so much that I kept the tank going for a while with various crabs, macro-algae’s, stars; pretty much whatever I could find in the tide pools at the local beach. After that aquarium, I kept a number of mostly freshwater tanks before again entering into the world of marine/reef tanks. Since then, I’ve kept tanks which have included many different approaches including a cold-water tank with local specimens (this when I lived in Washington State and had access to livestock from the Strait of Juan De Fuca).

When I moved back to the Midwest from Washington I got rid of all of my livestock and most of my equipment. I initially setup up small tank after moving but that didn’t last long and in February 2008 I can across a deal on the current 125-gallon tank and stand that was just too good to pass up! The new tank is plumbed to a 55-gallon sump that is located in my basement just behind and below the display. There is also a 10-gallon fuge/frag tank plumbed to the system. I’ll add more info on equipment in upcoming posts. In addition to the 125-gallon reef tank there is also a 12-gallon nano reef and a 10-gallon freshwater-planted tank in my home.

As they say a picture is worth a thousand words, so I’ll end this first post by including a FTS (full tank shot) of my pride and joy.

Happy Reefing!