Playing God

"Playing Poseidon" is a pretty stupid name, but "Playing God" was taken.

I think I love fish tanks because I think love playing god. I've always enjoyed setting up the tank more than actually taking care of it. In setting it up lies the thrill of starting a self-contained world teeming with life; in taking care of it lies the arm shoulder deep in poop-laden saltwater. This blog is dedicated to my latest venture into marine fish-keeping--from setting it up, to stocking it, and most importantly, to being shoulder deep in fish poop.

The whole thing started at least 15 years ago with Felix, my sister's carnival goldfish. Felix was an anomoly of sorts. Unlike Jaimy, the goldfish I took home, Felix lived past the first day in our care (to our credit, Jaime was buried in a cardboard jewelry box in the backyard... and then a few days later dug up by me to see what remained) (not much). And then Felix kept on living. When we realized that the fish in the bowl wasn't going anywhere fast, we decided to learn a little. We got a bigger bowl. We got an airstone. Within no time we had two more carnival goldfish (Bonapart, an albino with red eyes, and Sputnick, a regular goldfish with communist leanings.)

As the fish grew, the family as a whole became a bit more in the fish. We were always animal people. We already had Aree, an airdale terrier confined to city living, and Herman, an ageless box turtle who sat still in his shell for months at a time before we remembered he existed and that we had to feed him his canned corn. We were pros. We were heartless.

The first ten gallon tank was HUGE. It just seemed so endless compared to the gallon bowls that the three goldfish inhabited for so long. From the fake plants rooted in the neon gravel to the tacky bubble tubes in the back corners that connected to the undergravel filter everything just seemed incredible. And the Big Three--Felix, Bonapart and Sputnick--were in carnival fish heaven.

But if fishkeeping has one flaw, it's the constant lack of satisfaction. A few weeks after watching the goldfish in the new tank, we became a bit bored. It was time for new fish. Swordtails. Guppies. Mollys. Whatever it was, we wanted color. With new fish came new challenges. First, the Big Three, being kinda devoid of any nice color and extremely territorial were incompatible with the new guys, and were relegated back to the fish bowl, where they soon thereafter died of a broken heart. Felix was the first to go. He was an old fish, but he still had some fight in him, and I owe everything I ever learned about this hobby to him. At the time, though, all that mattered were new fish. Sputnick and then Bonapart followed.

Other challenges included disease and then, overstocking. Before long the 10 gallon was simply too small to get anything accomplished, so we moved to a 29 gallon tank that was immensely successful. Before long we were breeding freshwater fish and two or three tanks in addition to the 29 for rearing the young and hospitalizing the sick. The constant water flow made the house feel like Wrigley between innings. Needless to say, it was all a bit much.

One day, my mom had a colleague and his family over for dinner. By this time, familial interest in fish had waned and it was just me and one of my older brothers running the hobby. The guy noticed that my brother loved fish and made him an offer he couldn't refuse: "We're getting new carpeting, do you want our 90 gallon saltwater fish tank?" It never really dawned on us why anyone would ever want to get rid of a huge fish tank... In any case, a few days later the tank was in our family room. It was huge. To date, the only bigger tank I've ever had is the 92 I'm currently running. Compared to the 29 gallon tank and the 10 gallon tanks, this thing was a behemoth.

But it was also very, very flawed. It was an older set up that didn't have much in terms of equipment. It ran on a pretty large Amiracle trickle filter sump with builty in protein air stone protein skimmer which never worked. At the time, we didn't realize how important protein skimming was, so the fact that the one we had was entirely useless didn't really seem to matter to us. The tank was not drilled, and instead used a pretty bad overflow that always collected air. Many years of swallowed sea-water could have been avoided had we just consulted my father (a very handy doctor) who, years after my brother and I moved out of the house, got the idea to modify the overflow tube with a syringe.

We also new nothing about live rock, other than that it was expensive. At the time, aquarists with fish only set-ups decorated their tanks with fake corals, etc. Nowadays, the FOWLR (Fish Only with Live Rock) set up is much more prevalent than it was in the mid-nineties. So the trickle filter was basically a nitrate factory and the protein skimmer was useless. We tried lots of fish in the 90 gallon tank, but it never really worked worth a damn. Success was hard to come by.

My brother eventually went to college and I was in eighth grade. The 29 gallon tank had been down for awhile, so I set it back up as a cichlid tank. Cichlids are very, very cool fish, and no saltwater hobbyist should take them for granted. It was a beautiful tank, but disease struck and all of the fish died over the period of a week. I took it as a sign to try something new, so I bought a CPR bakpak off Ebay, some live rock from some guy, and a power compact retrofit kit and started my first attempt at a reef tank.

It didn't work.

I had constant hair algae because I used tap water and just dumped Kalkwasser in to the tank quickly. Corals never really lived very long. I did have an amazing Sea Apple and a very fun shrimp. But again, success was hard to come by. What the 29 gallon tank did, though, was get me reading. I started learning the basics about tank weight, water, lighting requirements, what live rock and skimming did, the history of fish keeping, etc. It helped lay a foundation for things later to come.

Then I went to college and dropped fish altogether. I turned off the light in my brain and that was it. No more fish. Why in god's name would I ever want to clean a tank again or start a siphon with my mouth or invest hundreds of dollars I didn't have into fish I couldn't even pet?

Well...

After I finished undergrad, I moved back to Chicago a new man, married, starting law school, and without a fish tank. It didn't last. We were invited over to some friends and lo' and behold, right in the living room was a 75 gallon freshwater fish tank. The switch in my head flicked on, and I just couldn't stop myself.

About a week later we had a 29 gallon tank in the living room.

About two months later, when we had bought three fish that were all way too big for the 29 gallon tank (a Midas Blenny, a Picasso Trigger and a Raccoon butterfly) we upgraded to a 75 gallon tank.

For the first time I was having success with Saltwater fish. I realized that success depended on a couple of fundamentals: water quality and feeding every day. You'd think I'd have figured this out years before, well--no one's perfect.

The 75 gallon tank was incredible. We were having great success, and thanks to the advent of craigslist, we were keeping costs minimal. The whole set up (a 75 gallon tank with stand, glass tops, a koralia and maxi-jet powerhead, 50 lb of live rock, 75 lb of live sand, a cpr bakpak protein skimmer with a new acella pump, and an emperor 400 bio-wheel) cost me only $300. The tank held a bunch of very happy and compatible fish.

But I got greedy with success. I wasn't quarantining my fish. When hair algae popped up on some of the live rock, I picked up a beautiful yellow tang to take care of it. Beautiful and disease laden. The disease, which I never managed to identify, wiped out all of my fish. I should have figured it out pretty easily though, as my juvenile emperor angel was cleaning him off all day (see the video in the side bar.) The illness progressed over the course of a weekend, when due to sabbath observance, I could do nothing but watch them suffer. It was a harrowing experience, but typical of a negligent aquarist. Two months later, after I was convinced the disease was gone, I somehow sold my 75 gallon set up for $500, which was $200 more than I bought it for.

Again, I thought I was done. And again, I was wrong.

Just before the Spring 2009 semester started, I convinced the wife to drive to Milwaukee with me and pick up a new tank. I found a 92 gallon corner tank, stand, light and Rena XP2 filter on Craigslist for $300. We always wanted a 92 corner tank, but there were two problems: (a) they retail at $1500 for the tank and stand, and (b) they are very hard to find used. So, we upgraded.

The point of this blog is to keep track of what we've done and to prompt discussion. I've found that despite being in this hobby for most of my life, I know very little. Through wetwebmedia and more recently, ReefCentral, I've found a network of fellow hobbyists who seem to know just about everything. I hope this blog will be an open forum for you all to teach me something new, and maybe even learn something, but most of all, to be a place to get a good laugh from our incredibly dorky but unrelinquishable hobby.

Feel free to comment and create a live discussion. We look forward to hearing from you.

The Tuna