Hi everyone! My name is Brian and I wanted to introduce myself.
I started into the hobby with my partner Moriah around 2004 while I was in grad school at Vanderbilt in Nashville, TN. We started with a friend’s abandoned 10 gallon fish tank that had a clownfish and 2 dead corals. In a few years we foolishly continued to upgrade while repeatedly moving apartments. When we moved up to DE for a postdoc at UD (we lived in Bear), we sold all the livestock off and stored our 280 gallon tank for quite a few years. Now that we’re settled in a house we bought in Woodlyn PA, we are starting to make preparations to get set back up. It seemed like this club would mostly fit our stomping grounds.
I know I have a lot to learn about new technology and techniques. I also know from our involvement in our TN reef club that having a good support system and a forum of folks to talk to can make a huge difference for your success.
I still have a long way to go until I actually start getting water in a tank, including running some new electric, but I’m dipping my toe back in and trying to learn some new stuff in the meantime. Floor braces are up though!
Thanks for the warm welcome! I’ll probably start a thread to document as I really get going. Right now the only thing to show is the floor braces, and I’m afraid that isn’t very exciting! We estimated the whole thing was going to be around 3,500 lbs and luckily we had a family member who could run some measurements by a structural engineer. Ended up finding a few pieces of laminar beams a bit bigger than what he recommended so it’s a little overbuilt probably, but that feels better than the alternative!
I saved a lot of the rock I had because it struck me as a huge expense that would prevent me from ever starting back up (filling a 270 -I mistyped earlier but it is a 270 not 280- is a LOT of rock). I’m definitely going to need some seed rock when the time comes though!
This is going to be a slow burn for me… the biggest thing I learned in reefing is that nothing good happens fast!
