Hi Everyone,

My name is Dick. I grew up in WI and retired in 2001 at age 63. If I do my math right that would make me 70 years old, er young. I've been in this wonderful hobby for 61 years. In 1946, after much whining, my Dad broke down and bought me a goldfish bowl. Little did he know what would transpire from then on. As a kid there wasn't much money available for me to expand but dad was always bring cantainers home for me to use. I married in 1959 and expanded into a home with a basement. Quickly, my aquarium numbers climbed to about 20 FW. I was breeding various cichlids and selling them to stores. In 1966 I set up my first SW tank and quickly experienced failure. I was not used to failure when it came to my aquariums. That failure turned my direction in this hobby completely. By 1970, the 20 FW aquariums in my basement were mostly converted to SW. By 1972 I no longer had any interest in FW and was totally SW. With about 22 aquariums devoted to SW, I quickly learned how to keep them healthy. I became known as the marine aquarium "expert" in my home town. Far from expert, I did have a considerable amount of success at keeping fish, invertebrates and even dwarf Octopus alive for extended periods of time. By 1974 I was selling things from my home. I've experienced the retail LFS for awhile, did installation and maintenance, plus the wholesale end of the business and in 1988 set up my first "REEF" tank with LR brought to WI from FL by a friend of mine. What a difference LR made as you all know.

In 1996 I shut down the wholesale business for lack of profit. It's not an easy business to make a living at. But, when a door is closed in life another is there to be opened. By 1996 I was growing coral, fragging and selling it to local stores and local club members. I decided to try my hand at web site design and developed my current web site, The Cultured Reef. This led me to the idea of moving to FL and setting up a coral fragging operation which we are in the process of doing.

Currently, (set up 2 years ago) I have a 135 gal mixed reef with, DSB, 180 lbs of mixed LR, sump/refugium, Top Fathom 200 Skimmer, UV Sterilizer, Red Sea ORP controller with Ozone generation, PFO 72" Solaris I4 LED lights, Little Giant QMD #4 pump and 2 Koralia #3 power heads for circulation. Inhabitants include, the usual clean up crew, a variety of hermits, snails, sand sifting worms, 3 Crocea clams (2 years), many SPS, LPS, Softies, Anthlia, various Mushrooms, Palyothas, several varieties of Ricordia, various Zoanthid polyp colonies, 2 Peppermint Shrimp, a Yellow Banded Coral Shrimp, 2 a 6" Sohal and a 4" Desjardinni Tangs, (1 1/2 years), 2 Green Chromis, and 4 clown fish, one each of A, Theillie, A. Black ocellaris, A. ocellaris and A. percula and 1 light intolerant Anemone. It's true most Anemones require bright lights but this guy, who is beautifully colored (purple and blue) crawled under the rocks and seldom shows himself. What a shame, he's absolutely beautiful when, on rare occasions he shows himself.

Of course, this is a synopsis of my history in this hobby, if you are interested in reading my tank thread a link is in my sig.

This looks like a valuable web site. I'm happy to have found it.

Dick

Hello Dick, thanks for the bio and the links to your aquariums! I checked out the talkingreef thread and found your aquarium and photos really cool! There is a lot of information there, you really are an old salt at this I admire the way you are documenting your aquarium with descriptions and pictures. Great picture of Randall's Goby...

P.S. I talked Dr. Jungle into adding your site to the newsfeed.

Thanks Dave,

Yes, I am an old salt. Still learning something new everyday. Keeps me young.

Thanks, too, for adding my site to the "newsfeed". I appreciate that so much I added a link to A-W on my forum links page. You can view it here - The Cultured Reef forum links page.

I hope to be a valuable member to the marine forum here.

Dick

Greeting Dick,

Nice to read the synopsis of your reef keeping history. I wanted to say hello earlier, but was on my first ever diving trip in the Philippines, and the internet was rather spotty. (... and I kept telling myself I was on vacation!).

I visited your site and became a member. Very nice 135 gallon aquarium you have built, and a wonderful story about the happenings with developing the captive squid system. It is such a pleasure to have "old hands" like you putting their knowledge and experience out there for people. And an invaluable help too.

I look forward to all your 'stories' and reef keeping thoughts.
Cheers!
Clarice