My wife, who has much more interest in clothes and exercising, (it could be worse) likes to buy me gadgets for Christmas, which is OK with me. She bought me an Ozonizer and I still use it and think it is a definite plus.
That was the early years, but I still have not lost my obsession to try new ideas. My wife and I got SCUBA diving certifications and we would go to the Caribbean occasionally to do some diving. Of course, on our way home our luggage was a lot heavier than when we left. I would always fill up on dead coral and rock. It was legal in those days. Customs officers just looked at you funny. The coral was all white and when algae grew on it you took it out and bleached it. That was the only kind of salt water tank there was. It was always written that live coral could not be kept in a tank. A few people like Lee Chin Eng kept it, but he lived in Jakarta next to the ocean, he used natural water and the tanks were outside.
Then in about 1982, I upgraded to a one hundred gallon tank. Everything in the old 40 gallon tank was transferred to the larger quarters. To save money I used local natural water. I collect it in plastic garbage pails. When I get it home I diatom filter it and add regular "Chlorine bleach" at a rate of one teaspoon to five gallons of water. Then the water is aerated for a week and double the dosage of chlorine remover is added. After a few more days it is safe to use. It is safe to use unless you use fresh scent chlorine bleach which will kill almost everything in the tank within seconds. (don't ask) The tank always had hermit crabs, "local" green crabs and snails but now I was putting in anemones. (I stopped adding copper to the tank about three years before this) They were one of the first inverts that you could get.
I built a lighting system with four flourescent lamps and a remote ballast. The lamps were hung about one inch above the water on cables. Since the tank was built into a wall you could not see this installation. When I wanted access into the tank, the lights would raise above the water on pulleys. I then installed a reverse flow under gravel filter.
I had a five gallon tank behind the main tank, the water would siphon into the small tank then through the prefilter and into a plexiglass manifold where it would then be directed down three tubes all on one end of the tank. The tubes run under the gravel and connect to the undergravel filter in three locations. A homemade wet dry was also added. Since there was no sump, the wet dry was placed above the tank behind the wall. The water just drained out of the bio-ball chamber and into the tank. I know all this is overkill but why do something simple when you can make a career out of it. That's why they call this a hobby. Originally, there was a sheet of black plexiglass an inch from the back glass with holes in it. The purpose for this was to hide the tubes and also the back glass. After my prized purple fire fish got caught behind this plastic, I decided to hide the tubes with rock, and I installed a shield on the last lamp to shade the back glass.
I had an old "Sanders" protein skimmer that I got about 1975 but it was much too small for this size tank so I built one. It was about three feet high and made out of a plexiglass tube. It worked well for many years until I built a venturi model five feet tall. After a few failed attempts I designed and built a venturi valve for about $2.00 that worked perfectly This skimmer worked so well that I sold a few of them to stores and wholesalers to use on their tanks. On my tank the waste from the skimmer goes into a five gallon bucket under the tank. I made a float switch that hangs over the bucket and shuts off the water to the skimmer in the event of an overflow. I know that it's hard to imagine a skimmer putting out five gallons of waste all at once but if you have twenty purple sea urchins that all decide to spawn at the same moment it can happen, and although urchins are kind of small they spawn for a couple of hours. I don't know where they keep it all but it can be real messy and it does not smell real good on a carpet. Did I mention that my wife exercises? A lot!
The corals looked good but not great. The nitrate was always high, usually in the thirties. I hesitated but then I removed the wet dry filter. No major catastrophe happened. The nitrates went down under ten and have stayed there ever since.
Now I SCUBA dive in New York as well as the tropics and I have a boat. Not a ship, but a boat. One day while I was launching this boat at low tide I noticed that the rocks along the sides of the ramp were jet black and very porous looking. They were irregular shaped and when I picked one up I noticed dozens of amphipods scurrying about. One side of all these rocks was flat and I immediately realized that it was old asphalt. You guessed it, my reef is about thirty percent asphalt. It looks much better than live rock. Coraline algae grows much quicker than it does on reef rock and it's free. Please do not rip up your street to get free rock. I would not use it if it were not underwater for many years. Being underwater a long time makes it very porous and any metals and toxins will be washed away. Now since I have too much rock I just collect the amphipods that are very abundant and dump them in my reef.
While SCUBA diving in New York, I also collect purple sea urchins. I use these in my reef to be a constant water test kit. If the urchins are healthy so is the water. They also eat unbelievable amounts of algae.
Recently, the urchins started dying. I did all the tests I could think of but found nothing. Then the corals started going. I did a one hundred percent water change and I was still losing corals. Some of them I had for eight years. I also lost a five inch Tridacna clam. I realized that my town just switched to a new water company. I called the company to ask if they were adding anything to the water that would affect the tank. They told me, "of course not!", just "zinc orthophosphate" to control corrosion in the pipes. I said, "WHAT!!? Do you know what zinc does to corals? " It's worse than the copper cleaning pads I used thirty years ago. Winter time is no time to go to the beach to collect water. On the ocean beaches the surf is very rough, with waves over six feet and the water is about 40 degrees I am a SCUBA diver but I am not crazy. On the bay side the water is calm but it is kind of questionable to use in a reef. The water is too rough now to launch the boat.
I quickly went to the supermarket and bought bottled water. I put all the livestock in plastic tubs with new water. I could not get enough bottled water to fill the tank so I got a 2" PVC pipe 4' long and filled it with new carbon and poly filters. I dripped water through this twice to fill the tank. The remaining corals started to look a little better. I just received a reverse osmosis filter and since this model makes fifteen gallons a day, I am waiting until it cranks out one hundred gallons so I can change all of the water. In the spring I still go back to natural, but I will use RO water for topping up. Now I use VHO lighting (still homemade) but the reverse undergravel, the skimmer, the asphalt, the natural New York water, the urchins and the amphipods are still there. There was a pair of banded coral shrimp that spawned dozens of times, those blue devils lived seven years and hatched out many babies, A pair of seahorses also had many babies and there has not been a parasite seen for about fifteen years , most of the leather corals have offspring all over the place. And remember that tetradon puffer? He lived twelve years.
I certainly do remember the days of the dead corals & fish tanks. I believe I had one of those as well.lol Actually I still have them in a box in my basement. Can't believe the $$$ I paid for them back then either.lol
