Hi Everybody at Reef Frontiers-
I'm Kevin and I live in Ronan, MT...in the spirit of Devon's post, I'll tell you a bit about my set-up. I've had various aquariums for over 40 years, but my salt water tank has been a crash course in the last 2-1/2 years.
My display is a 270 gallon bottom drilled Clear Fabrications acrylic tank with a 125 gallon sump/refugium beneath the display in the stand. A local friend had to get rid of the tank 'rather suddenly' (did not want to move it to Alaska) and we heard about the situation...my wife Debbie told me to go ahead, she knew that I'd always wanted to try my hand at salt water. Maybe not such a 'grand' first attempt though!
So we helped take things down, put the corals and fish in a couple of temporary tanks, pulled a window out of the basement & mover the tank in, cycled it and moved everybody back into their original home. Then we went to Ethiopia and adopted our 2 youngest sons, but THAT is an entirely different story!
As Charlie can attest, I've gone from a total freak out if a fish looked cross-eyed at me kind of reefer to somebody having a bit more sedate approach to our collective affliction (I hope!). Fish & corals seem to be doing OK at least!
The tank came equipped with 2 - 36" 8x39W ATI Powermodule T5 High-Output Fixtures, an ATI Bubblemaster 250 Skimmer, for water circulation there are 2 Eheim 1262 return pumps, a ReeFlo Dart Pump with an Ocean-Motions 4 way (with the rotating drum) on a closed circuit to 4 outlets in the bottom of the tank, 2 Tunze Turbelle Stream 6101's with a 7095 controller. To the Tunze set-up I've added 2 of the 6105 Turbelle Stream controllable pumps for plenty of flow n the tank. I added an Apex Aqua Controller last year and a carbon reactor recently.
I have changed my rock work a couple of times since the original 'pile' and am liking my 2-pile set up...I've added & changed out rock from a couple of other tanks that friends have taken down recently to come up with my current configuration. I grow Chaeto in the refugium and have a couple of 'duplicate' fish that I've obtained with various rock & other fish & coral from friend's tanks (a Flame Angel & Royal Gramma that already have twins in the main display). I keep learning, and really enjoy the hobby; local friends (as in folks with no blue glow out of their house at night) laugh at me when i tell them I go home & check the coral for growth some days (really). I don't know why they're laughing...
My thread at Reefland for the last year is 'Lost Creek 270' (an amazingly imaginative title!):
Lost Creek 270
I'm looking forward to meeting new folks here & keeping old friendships on-going!
I'm Kevin and I live in Ronan, MT...in the spirit of Devon's post, I'll tell you a bit about my set-up. I've had various aquariums for over 40 years, but my salt water tank has been a crash course in the last 2-1/2 years.
My display is a 270 gallon bottom drilled Clear Fabrications acrylic tank with a 125 gallon sump/refugium beneath the display in the stand. A local friend had to get rid of the tank 'rather suddenly' (did not want to move it to Alaska) and we heard about the situation...my wife Debbie told me to go ahead, she knew that I'd always wanted to try my hand at salt water. Maybe not such a 'grand' first attempt though!
So we helped take things down, put the corals and fish in a couple of temporary tanks, pulled a window out of the basement & mover the tank in, cycled it and moved everybody back into their original home. Then we went to Ethiopia and adopted our 2 youngest sons, but THAT is an entirely different story!
As Charlie can attest, I've gone from a total freak out if a fish looked cross-eyed at me kind of reefer to somebody having a bit more sedate approach to our collective affliction (I hope!). Fish & corals seem to be doing OK at least!
The tank came equipped with 2 - 36" 8x39W ATI Powermodule T5 High-Output Fixtures, an ATI Bubblemaster 250 Skimmer, for water circulation there are 2 Eheim 1262 return pumps, a ReeFlo Dart Pump with an Ocean-Motions 4 way (with the rotating drum) on a closed circuit to 4 outlets in the bottom of the tank, 2 Tunze Turbelle Stream 6101's with a 7095 controller. To the Tunze set-up I've added 2 of the 6105 Turbelle Stream controllable pumps for plenty of flow n the tank. I added an Apex Aqua Controller last year and a carbon reactor recently.
I have changed my rock work a couple of times since the original 'pile' and am liking my 2-pile set up...I've added & changed out rock from a couple of other tanks that friends have taken down recently to come up with my current configuration. I grow Chaeto in the refugium and have a couple of 'duplicate' fish that I've obtained with various rock & other fish & coral from friend's tanks (a Flame Angel & Royal Gramma that already have twins in the main display). I keep learning, and really enjoy the hobby; local friends (as in folks with no blue glow out of their house at night) laugh at me when i tell them I go home & check the coral for growth some days (really). I don't know why they're laughing...
My thread at Reefland for the last year is 'Lost Creek 270' (an amazingly imaginative title!):
Lost Creek 270
I'm looking forward to meeting new folks here & keeping old friendships on-going!
