My father bought his first aquarium; a metal-framed, slate-bottomed 29 gallon, in 1947, so when I came along in '66, it was only natural that I kept tanks just like dad. He gave me my first tank; a 10 gallon, when I was almost six years old. Strangly enough, the fish I kept lived, so me being a voracious reader and an all-pro lawnmower, more and more tanks appeared as I wanted to keep what I had read about in books. One battle with ich spurred me to keep a quaratine tank (that same 10 gallon), which I do to this day.
I stayed in freshwater until 1982 when I felt that technology and my experience were to the point that I could keep marine fish succesfully. Lawn-mowing and lifeguarding money resulted in a 220 gallon aquarium which, after six weeks or so, I added damselfish to. My first lesson was that damselfish view the whole aquarium as their own and will attack whatever else you put in
. I was continually amazed that what I put in lived.
Matriculated on the undersea adventures of Jacques Cousteau, I'd always wanted to have a marine tank with corals the way I'd seen on TV. Fortunately blessed with tons of patience, it took me five years of intensive research and pestering people in the know at public aquariums before I gave it a shot at a reef tank in the latter half of '87. The damselfish were re-housed as I searched for what was then called reef rock. I got lucky as a company in Florida that a sympathetic public aquarium fellow had contacted for me sent me a very, very smelly box of 200 pounds of live rock. Remember, this was in the days when it was legal to take rock out of the Caribbean.
Eight weeks later, the tank finally was smell-free and creatures started to appear on the rock and in the sand. Took me a couple weeks to find out they were copepods. A handful of snails of some type glided up and down the glass at night and cleaned the tank of algae. Wonders of wonders as more and more life showed up. A tiny brown serpent starfish joined the snails on the glass.
I was enthralled. Several months later, the same public aquarium fellow obtained a few corals for me. They were mushrooms, ricordea (found out what that was much later), a hand-sized yellowish-brown leather coral of some type and what I later found out was a zooanthid. That tiny specimen proceeded to cover nearly everything. A frantic call to the public aquarium guy said I could cut the mat, so I did and gave them the chunks. That zoanthid's decendants are still in my tanks. I still have that 220.
One of my senior projects in college was marine reef life.
As technology improved, so did my skills. My first full-blown reef tank was in '93 as the Berlin method finally sifted down to NC Arkansas. I'm enormously pleased that its now possible for the average person to keep a successful reef tank with sufficient research (and deep pockets) and equally pleased that more and more fish, corals, and live rock/sand are being aqua and maricultured to ensure a bright future for our hobby.
Dave
