2008-2009

Before I was a teenager I was keeping aquariums. My bedroom was covered on all available walls with 10 gallon and smaller aquariums occupied by all the common inexpensive pet store inhabitants of the time. Around that time, a new pet store opened up in town and for their grand opening they had a raffle for a new 29 gallon aquarium with the light and wood stand included. They didn't have a limit on entries and I remember filling out at least twenty slips hoping to win it. My mom filled one out when we went back to drop them in the tank for the raffle and I mostly forgot about it. A week or two later there was a message on the answering machine for my Mom saying she had won it. Of course she won it for me and it was soon set up for an Oscar and a Firemouth Cichlid until the Oscar got bigger and took it over. He lived in it for years and after he was gone my fish interest turned to tropical plants and the aquarium became a terrarium for tropical ferns for a couple years. After that the tank set empty in my closet for many more years until I moved out to my own place. That's where this story begins...

My 12g AquaPod was almost 3 years old and I had a spot for a bigger tank in my new place. I was wanting a FOWLR for colorful fish and had a lot of leftover equipment and live rock so I set the 29g up and let it cycle.

                                                               December 18, 2008
Roughly 20lbs of live rock from previous tanks and the 150w JBJ Viper modded to hold a pendant hood made from a security halogen light. Unfortunately I used tap water and Reef Crystals so this tank had problems from the beginning.

                                                                         January 2, 2009
Added a Hydor Koralia 2 and Reef Octopus BH-100 from when the 12g was set up for SPS. Also added the Yellow Tail Blue Damsel from the 12g.

 

 

                                                                 January 28, 2009
I finally had one of the fish I had always wanted, a Flame Angel. I paid way too much for it, but I was too excited to get one to go price shopping at the time. I shortly after added my Ocellaris Clownfish from the 12g and then decided a Royal Gramma would round out all the bright colors I wanted for the tank. I found one for a great price and after adding it I learned the hard lesson of why you should always quarantine new fish. I had an outbreak of Ich and it wiped all the fish out in days.

                                                                        March 8, 2009
Since I had to go fish free for a while to let the Ich die out, I added most of my remaining Zoa/Paly frags from the 12g which became an LPS garden. In hindsight, I really wish I wouldn't have moved the Zoa frags over. My last polyp of the original PPRPE floated off it's plug never to be seen again and I still kick myself for that. For better flow I upgraded to a Hydor Koralia 3 and tossed in some plastic plants to give this empty tank a little aesthetics.

 

                                                                     March 21, 2009
To test if the Ich was gone I added a few Damsels. The 14k Phoenix bulb was a couple years old at this point and only using tap water was starting to take its toll on this tank, especially with the new bio load.

 

                                                                     September 22, 2009
I added a couple more types of Damsels as algae slowly took over the tank and nutrients went up and up. I didn't bother with water changes and this tank continued downhill for the rest of the year.