Guest Post: The complexity of naming a fish...

My Roommate's 300 Gal. Hard Coral Reef Aquarium (2004-2005)

My first apartment was in Fort Collins, CO in 2004. My roommate at the time happened to be a huge aquarist. He had a 300 gallon hard coral reef tank in our living room (pictured), a 200 gallon soft coral reef tank in his bedroom, a 100 gallon planted aquarium in our living room, and various other aquariums throughout the apartment.  It was great! Truly the ultimate man cave, we lived on the bottom floor and had plants growing everywhere, aquariums in every room, we even jerry rigged the dishwasher's water line to top off evaporated water from the 300 gallon tank (who needs clean dishes when you have hard corals to take care of?)

My 10 Gallon Live Rock/Live Sand Aquarium (2004-2005)

This is my initial aquarium, with live sand and rock about one month in after install. I made the hood, rigged the lighting and let it cycle through the nitrate/nitrite cycle.






In 2005 I moved to Maryville, MO - I moved the tank and set it up in my dorm room. One night on a date with Tricia we went to buy some fish for my aquarium. Pictured below are the Clarki Clownfish and Purple Pseudochromis that we got, I had always referred to fish by species, however...

2005-2006

Tricia knew their names were Alex (the Clarki Clownfish) and Maria (the Purple Pseudochromis). The lower right hand rock has some great coralline growth on it that later showed some small zooanthid polyps and even housed a small fan worm.






When we got married, the tank moved again and sat empty for 3 years while we were in TX. I kept the sand and rock in a bucket and the tank on our porch.

For Zeke's birthday this year we decided to set it up again. He has always had a fascination with orange and his room is decorated with reef fish so naturally we got him a Clownfish (False Percula).

I set up the 20 gallon tank a few days before his birthday, added some live sand and put the rock in that had been sitting in the bucket the entire time. I made a new light hood for the tank, rigged the florescents on it. It has a biowheel hangon mechanical filter running on it now. In April I will add a protein skimmer which will help to get rid of dissolved organic particulates. We added the clownfish on January 27th, a gift from grandma, great-grandma, and Aunt T. A month later the tank is now towards the end of its cycling, currently having a small (large) diatom outbreak in the tank but I did a water change and added some blue legged hermits and the diatoms are slowly going away.

Zeke will sit and watch while I feed the clownfish every morning and he likes to pull himself up and look inside the aquarium.

In another month we will add a second smaller clownfish and possibly a small zooanthid. We will limit the fish in this tank to just the two clownfish and once I add the actinic bulb to it, we'll try to propagate zooanthids off of it as well as clownfish fry (babies). I have two ten gallon tanks that we will use to grow the fry into adults and the other for growing rotifers and algae that the rotifers feed on.

2013

His name is Bobby....










*Written by Juan