The Aquarium Room

Maurie and I have always had a love of the ocean (as you can see from our vacations). On a whim, we visited our local fish store (LFS), and were overwhelmed by the beauty of their show tanks. After an inquiry with a salesperson, we were quickly handed a starter book and told to go away until we knew what the heck we were getting ourselves into.

Fortunately for us we engaged an aquarium design firm Holy Mackerel to help us put it together. Maurie and I, having spent hours diving some of the most spectacular reefs in the world, wanted a little slice of everything in the tank. I showed him multiple reef shots from Fiji and the Caribbean, filled with both soft and stony corals and said, "I want that!" Richard, the owner, of course, tried to set expectations about what could be put in an aquarium and we, of course, ignored him. And so our reef tank odyssey began...

We started the tank project about the same time we started building our pool outside. Interestingly enough, it took about the same amount of time (around 4 months) to do both projects (albeit, the swimming pool crew was a cast of thousands, where as only two people did the tank). For those of you that saw Finding Nemo and are thinking about jumping into an aquarium, I say to you, look before you leap. The intial cost of the tank was around $10,000 including the custom stand and window seats that cover the sumps and plumbing. You can do it for much less, but we were looking for an architecturally significant piece so we went on the high side. Oh and by the way, this is one of Holy Mackerel's smaller tanks.

Finally, the big day arrived when they put water in the tank. A week passed and they put the first fish in (A small school of False Perucla Clown Fish). There's nothing quite as exciting as being able to put the first critters in your tank or seeing the first living thing (in my case a small piece of cabbage coral and an apastasia anenome). Ah joy, it started to feel like the ocean was taking shape right there in our home, a very barren, expensive ocean... OK, more like a bunch of rocks with some pretty fish, but we stil liked it. The day we came home to see the first coral and additional fish was like being a kid again and running down stairs to see what Santa had brought. I found myself eaglerly anticipating the day that the guys would come to bring me my next present of a bubble coral or some cool new fish. This went on for the better part of a couple months.

I also started purchasing some animals from the LFS. This would be the point that the true cost of a reef tank came out. Each little critter or piece of coral that you put in cost somewhere in the region of $15 - $500,000. It seemed in my case that most of them ended up in the latter category.

"Let's get that cool pink one", says Corby.

"Excellent choice, that will be $500,000, cash, check or charge?", says the local fish store.

"For a minor additional fee, we'll throw in a couple of these really cool red flatworms and some of these pretty little anenomes".

This is also the point when we learned about the tragic fragility of sea life and evils of bad capture techniques. How did we learn this you ask? We learned this after things started to die. Let me put it this way, we were instructed not to name the fish because this essentially signs their death warrant.

"Hey look at the cute fish, let's name him/her Winifred (hey, they're fish. They don't care about the name. Its not like the other fish are going to be teasing him/her, Look its Finny Winny, he's got blue gills, haha). Why is he floating in that strange position? Winnie?!"

The sad, but true fact in reef keeping is that you are going to loose livestock. Its going to become deadstock. This sucks because it was a living being very happily existing in the ocean several days before its ripped from its home and family to be deposited in my tank, which no matter what I try to do is not the ocean. Then I turn around and name it Winifred or Lisbeth, and BAM, lights are out and its on its way to that great coral reef in the sky. This is one reason that we now try to only stock aqua-cultured animals. It salves our conscience somewhat to think that the poor little buggers never knew the real ocean and have heard from all of their tank mates about the danger of getting a name, so they're much more on their guard.

"Poop in the water everytime they come to look at you, or better yet, swim next to the mandarin goby, he's already got a name and his days are numbered anyway."

Ok, back to the story...the tank started up very nicelly. Soft corals such as mushrooms and zooanthids did especially well. The clowns thrived and even spawned within the first six months of being in the tank. We had some trouble with hard corals, that was later found to be an issue with temperature (I'll talk more about this later). It was at this point that I decided that the clowns needed an anenome to live in and bought a small long tentacle anenome for the tank. Anenomes are notoriously difficult to keep in that they are very finicky about water chemistry. Well this one decided that our tank was just peachy and settled down on a nice rock in the corner of the tank. Ah the joy of the clowns when they discovered it and that they could lavish themselves in anenome slime all the live long day.

"Excuse me ma'm, what is that fragrance you're wearing?"

"Oh, that would be anenome slime, do you like?"

"I'll say, want to spawn?"

They were happy, and so were we. Clownfish in anenomes are one of Maurie's favorites in the ocean. I can attest to this because when we were in Fiji, she made me take pictures of everyone of them. There are a few clownfish in Fiji I might add.

"There is one."

"Got it." (actually came out blub, blub)

"There is one"

"Got it"

You get the idea. But I digress again...The anenome prospered; the anenome grew. How excited we were that a hard to keep animal was prospering in our tank. Give it food, we were told, and it will grow even more.

Have you ever seen a science fiction movie where some little cute thing grows up to be a really ugly, mean bad thing that eats everyone on the spaceship except for the cute blond that has to take all of her clothes off to escape? Well this was sort of like that only there was no cute blond sans clothing. I fed the anenome fresh squid (straight from the gormet squid bar at our local really expensive and wierd food store) for several months. At this point it had more than quadrupled in size. Around this time was when it started eating the tank. By eating the tank I mean every fish that was not intimately familiar with its slime. By intimately familiar I mean something akin to an adolescent boy and a Victoria Secret catalog. You get the point. The big joke was how much we were spending on anenome food.

"Ooh, lets get that fish, he's cool."

"That will be $500,000."

Time passes...

"Ah look it thinks its a clownfish, its swimming with the...Oh."

Time passes...

"Dad, what are those bones in the tank from?"

The really sad thing is that sometimes this happened with entire schools of fish. We both love cardinal fish and at one point put an entire school in the tank. Each night the school would go to sleep doing their thing (usually talking about how not to get a name and how anenome slime really is quite gross, not matter what the clownfish say), and somewhere during the night one would decide to leave the safety of the school and go out to do his business or check out the latest Mrs. Miller album and BAM! SLOSH! SLURP! Deadstock. The interesting thing is that the next day, the other fish really didn't seem that nervous.

"Where's #5?"

"Who?"

"You know THE FISH...black squiggles, fins, scales, kind of looks like us?"

"Never heard of him, now go back to swimming and move around a lot, if they can't tell us apart they can't name us."

This is the point that we came to realize fish have really bad memories and only humans have fraternities in schools.

Sooo...at some point, we asked the guys to remove Monster from the tank (yes, we named the bastard, but it clearly had no effect, showing that the Naming Theory is just that, not the Naming Law). He now lives in the tank at a dentist office, the irony of which is not lost I hope...

"You have some discoloration of the left upper bicuspid, we'll need to take care of it immediately, that will be $500,000. Normally, it would only be $450,000, but I need to put some more fish in my tank."

With Monster gone, we once again began to replentish the fish population and once again enjoyed a period of relative prosperity. We added a Regal Tang (Dorie from Finding Nemo) as well as several gobies. Our first giant clam went in, a beautiful Crocea. Life was coming up rose tip anenomes and I was getting cocky and posting on the reef keeping forums even though it was the maintenance company that really was doing all the work.

"ROFL, r u kidng me, IMHO the LFS is full of BS."

And so to punish my arrogance the reef tank gods saw fit to blight me with a plague and pestilence. Remember those red flatworms the LFS threw in? Well, it turns out that red planaria can procreate faster than reality tv spin-offs. Even better, you can cut on in half and both pieces will grow into worms. Let's all thank God that the same is not true for politicians and attorneys.

So in all the best traditions of the Bible, the ravaging hords of the worms hath doth descendeth upon the reef like the archangel Herbert (new version reference) and so visited terrible excretions upon the poor denizens thereith that lived. You see it turns out that although the these particular worms don't attack corals, they pull nutrients like iodine out of the water and release toxins into to it when they die. In small numbers, this is not a big deal, but when you are talking 100 cuzillion (= 1 x 10 raised to power of the number of spam adds for erectile disfunction medicine i get in one hour), you have a problem.

Of course the maintenance guys didn't sit back, eating chicken fried bacon and watch reruns of The Real Giligans Island the whole time. First they attempted to suck all of the little bastards off with the aquarim version of a shop vac. And while the reef was clean enough for a hermit crab to eat off of, all it did was piss the worms off. In reaction they kidnapped one of clownfish and threatened to eat the slime off of him and turn him loose in the anenome. Next, I purchased several slugs known to eat red planaria and put them in the tank. They started off smashingly, munching down on worms like there was no tomorrow, and there wasn't. That night the worms talked to one of the resident crabs, probably offering them a spot in the Organization, and by morning no more slugs. This time to make sure that I understood who really was in charge, they took out several corals and fish. I knew I was in trouble when I received the manarin gobie's fin in a gift wrapped box.

Then, after suitable despair and humility, the reef gods saw fit to end my suffering and didth lift the plague frometh my aquarium. The real truth is the Affiliated Union of Red Planaria (A URP for short) figured out that the real money was in off shoring spam bots for erectile disfunction adds and decided to leave. Thus endeth the time of the planaria.

The tank is custom built plexiglas, fabricated by a company in Houston, Tx. The tank holds 240 gallons. The total water volume with the 2 sumps is probably around 330 gallons.

The Equipment

Plumbing and Filtration

Lighting

The Critters

Over the time that we've had the aquarium, we've had a number of tank denizens. Some unfortunately have moved on to the happy hunting grounds in the sky.

Mandarin Goby	Regal Tang	Lyretail Anthia

Teardrop Maxima	Bicolor Blenny	True and False Percula Clownfish

Teardrop Maxima	Bicolor Blenny	True and False Percula Clownfish