Aquariums

I was just wondering how many people have aquariums and if you do what kind and what region are you in? I service alot of aquariums and not many of them drive exotics? Just curious

 

i had a 20 gallon tank that i got for my girlfriend and recentley a friend gave us a 75 gallon that we just set up a couple of weeks ago.
electric blue crayfish
2 garani's
5 tigerbarbs
1 albino shark
and some sort of catfish
and a crab that got out and we found a month later....R.I.P

 

My daughter wants one, but I don't want to be the one to have to clean the damn thing.

 

Have had aquariums for 20 years.... sold it all off (except the coral).... getting ready to buy a 328, and can only afford the time & expense for one hobby at-a-time

I'll miss my fish tank
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I had a 75 Gallon Freshwater one. I had a arowana, 2 discus, A knife fish and a couple freshwater sharks. Had to get rid of them all when school started. They needed a lot of attention.

 

Wow Mark, that is really cool!

 

Thanks....that's just part of it LOL

When I was a kid in Florida (durring the 70's) I use to buy display/show corals from all the old MOM & POP shops...as they slowly faded away to the big chain T-shirt shops.

Its amazing some of the stuff from the 40's 50's and 60's that sat as display background in those old little tourist shops
-1st photo, I left my coffee mug on the stand for size of scale
-2nd photo, not a good shot, the corals are all perfect, big, and very nice pieces... just need cleaned up, and to be nicely displayed

I know its "old school" in the hobby now, but I enjoyed collecting the coral when I was a kid (saving it from the trourist shops) maybe one day I can put together the entire collection and donate it to a museum...
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Very cool coral Mark

 

I have a 265 gal. salt tank in the office and a 135 salt in my bedroom. I have had tanks since I was a kid. I started with a 5 gal tank. I moved up to a 10 and got a 20. I had all 3 running when I was in high school. After college I got a 29 tall. Later I moved to a couple of 50's. Then over 10 years ago I had 2 110's and 2 50's. I've consolidated to what I have now.

 

We need more pics in this thread!

 

That's exactly what happened to my dad and he's still cleaning it today on my behalf

 

Ive got a 85 gallon Salt water tank at home built in to the wall in my foyer. They are a lot of work to maintain.. Its amazing what grows in the Ocean. If you get one try a Clam they get large and look really good. Xenia is also really cool. BEWARE, you will piss money to the wind with these tanks.. Good fish cost 50-75 bucks and nobody warranties them. If they make it past a week though your usually ok.. I'll get some pics of my set up, after I clean the glass with the algae magnet..

 

sounds a lot like me.. up until around 8 years ago or so. we moved into a house and couldnt agree on where to put the 125 saltwater aquarium.. mainly because of the heat/window factor here in houston. eventually i would love to get another large sw aquarium. so beautiful. i had everything from clowns, puffers, sharks, eels, lionfish, tangs, etc...

$100 says i go look at aquariums this weekend after reading this thread lol

 

I have a couple friends that work at the Downtown Aquarium there in Houston. I understand they have a pretty good collection, you might start there for some extreme motivation. Just remember that these places have full-time employees, it's gonna be tough to keep a big saltwater system healthy in your "spare time".

 

ya guys these tanks sound amazing. all of you worried about cleaning it, check with your local fish store for the service program. Thats what my company does and people dont mind paying because you finally get to enjoy it when someone else does the dirty work

 

I didn't realize we had Deuce Bigalow on here.

 

true, when i did own mine, i had a pretty good filter system. so basically once a week i would do a quick clean of the filter (protein skimmer) but the BIG hastle was changing the water. i think i was doing that once a week.. adding 20 gallons of fresh water that i would have to go BUY, take home, and lug upstairs.. yeah, i'm already discouraged from another saltwater aquarium

 

I've kept full reef tanks for about 10 years now. I had a 55 gallon at my office that I lost during Katrina as we went without power at the hospital for a week. I managed to save my home 210 gallon with a generator. I'm putting another 210 in the wall of my new office that's almost done with construction, and I'm starting a new house this year that will have a 2200 gallon tank in one wall on the game room (11 feet long, 4.5 feet tall, 6 feet front to back)

Almost the coral colonies are grown from small frags. I only have a few colonies that were taken whole from the ocean.


Someone asked for some pics, here's some shots of the 210 at my house.
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A few pics..
I need to do a little clean up as you can see.
btw, we tried our local aquarium service guy in Bowling Green, he almost killed my tank and he did kill everything in my neighbors tank(it turned completely green) so we stopped paying him $75 per visit to screw up. I would love to pay someone $75 to take care of it but as with most everything hard to find good help..
We change 40 gallons of water at a time and clean the protein skimmer every 3-4 days(that stuff is nasty).
pic 1 over all pic
pic 2 Clam close up
pic 3 Yellow tang, Nemo is far left and you can barely see the blue damsel below the Tang. Left of the Tang is the Xenia I was talking about. the little hands twist during the day and collect their food out of the water.
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Amazing!!! Thanks for sharing!!

btw, do you know how I can get rid of that bubble algea in my tank?

 

Yours looks great too! I love the soft corals. The 55 I had was mostly colts, xenias and other leathers.

As far as bubble algae goes, it crops up in mine from time to time (along with everything else like blooms of dinoflagellates, hair algae and flatworms ) I just try to pick the big ones out without rupturing them, and add emerald crabs. They're truly the only thing that I've found that will eat them.

 

Wow those tank pics look amazing. Ya I know its hard finding a service guy that is good. It is just as hard as hiring them to work for you. To get the bubble algae out, use the emerald crabs. when you pull them out they can pop and spread more bubble algae in the tank.

 

I wanted to bump this post. I can't wait to see your 2,200 gallon house tank.

 

The tank is built and is soon to be set on the slab. Going to be dropped into the house with a boom-crane, then the roof closed in over it. Should happen in the next two weeks or so.

 

Can't wait to see pictures. What kind of tank are you going for (reef, saltwater fish, freshwater)?