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

My First Ever Guest Post!

Hey Friends! I know my blog isn't big or fancy nor does it have hundreds of followers as some, but in the event that you look forward to seeing posts here more often than once a week, today I have a special feature. One of my friends has written a guest post! Cool huh?!? Without any further ado, I'll let her take it away...

Another Side of Pregnancy
Hey! My name is Stephanie. I am Tricia’s co-worker and good buddy! I also do some cat-sitting for her! And I must say Dora is a very good kitty kitty. We also bake together (September’s theme – whoopie pies did not work out so great for me. I chose to do Oatmeal Cream Pies. I did a combination of two recipes but I really didn’t like the cream nor the cookie part… and I think I mostly did not like them because I was really hoping for something as close to the real Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pie as I could get.) Tricia is a very good friend to me and I only hope I am a good friend to her. She spends a lot of our time together listening to me ramble on and on about something, but we all know Tricia is not one to spill her guts when it comes to chatting about feelings or issues. But we totally switch in a larger group setting… she talks some and I do not really talk at all! Anyways, this is not what I am here to talk about.
I am here to talk about Tricia’s pregnancy from a friend point of view. I do not have children nor am I expecting, so I totally see her pregnancy without having any of the experiences she is going through. I remember when Tricia told me! I was one of the first few and boy (no pun intended) did I feel special!!! I think she was probably around 6 weeks or so and she was just starting to feel changes happening. Days would go by and I could just see the sickness and tiredness on her face. Tricia is a naturally peppy person, but the yucky feeling she was experiencing really stunk for me because she just needed to sit in her office and be still and quiet, but I wanted to go over and chat or take a walk somewhere. I hated it for her but I also knew the blessing that was going to come from this.
The sick and tired days for Tricia are mostly over, I say mostly over because she is still really tired at the end of the day ...but who isn’t? I am definitely enjoying Tricia’s second trimester…haha not that she or the baby are there for me to enjoy but it is always good for someone who hopes to have children someday see this time of the pregnancy and not just the icky - feeling weeks or the restless weeks that you hear about at the end of pregnancy. Tricia has had a positive attitude from the beginning. It has been fun to see her excitement grow as she and the baby grow! And I know the Lord will continue to grow both of them.
Let me just say a few words about her “reveal” here at work! All of us girls knew when she was going in for the appointment to find out the sex of the baby. It was a late morning appointment which fell into lunch. So we all, including Tricia, waited and waited for the morning to pass by as well as our lunch breaks! Once she got back from lunch we all huddled up in her office for her to tell us the big news… BOY or GIRL?!?!?!? I had made my prediction which went against most but not all other predictions, but I was right...it was a BOY! She whipped out this tiny little black tuxedo onesie!! And of course all of the girls screamed and ooooooohhhhhh-eeeedddd and aaaaawwwww-eeeeedddd.
My husband and I continue to pray for Tricia, her Lovebug and their baby boy! We pray the Lord would continue to keep Tricia and the baby safe throughout the remainder of the pregnancy as well as through the labor and delivery. We pray for Tricia and her Lovebug that God will guide them through their many years of parenting to come. We are extremely excited for the three of them!