jk_s124
Valuable Member
Welcome John! Sorry to hear about the tragedy. It’s a great gesture and honor to take marks system and care for it and make it yours. Thanks for the story and best of luck to you!
Back to Reefing after 20 year hiatus
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- Thread starter Backwoods Reefer
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Alanna102499
Well-Known Member
Welcome back & to R2R!
OP
OP
Backwoods Reefer
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Wow... Thanks so much for the warm welcome everyone! I've taken some pictures along the way of building the Red Sea 500P. Let me gather up my material and I'll do a build thread. It's coming along well so far. I really look forward to getting to the 1+year mark (currently 5 months in, 1 month lights on). By then the aquascaping should have a nice layer of coralline algae and some nice growth from the corals. Right now it looks a bit funny as I used a mix of rock to include pieces from Mark's tank which I killed first (decided to start clean). Eventually I want to add a nice maxima clam but that will be much later on when I'm confident the tank is well seeded and healthy. I might need a light upgrade before then too.
Rick.45cal
2500 Club Member
Welcome to Reef2Reef and welcome back to reef keeping. You’ve come to the right place, we’ve got a great community of people here who want nothing more than you to be successful 
windemerejack
Valuable Member
Hi and welcome from the UK. Very friendly and knowledgeable folk on here, you will love it.
Stay safe
Stay safe
MoreReefPlease
Active Member
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Welcome! That's a nice size tank! Good luck!
Welcome to R2R and back to the hobby!!! What an excellent remembrance gift!
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Backwoods Reefer
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Lake District... what a beautiful place! Some of that Grasmere Gingerbread sounds good right about now ;Happy I have work colleagues/friends in Yorkshire who took me there on a visit back in about 2015 I believe. Hope work takes me back there someday! Cheers!
Welcome Back!!!!!!
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Backwoods Reefer
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Great meme! An icon scene from Baz Luhrmann's Gatsby. I love his take on the F. Scott Fitzgearald classic.Welcome back & to R2R!
Dolelo96
2500 Club Member
Welcome to the R2R family! I’m so sorry for the loss of your friend, but what an awesome way to remember him! Great pictures..looking forward to seeing more
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notsobigtime
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Welcome back to the reef game! Being a new entry to the game I love seeing past refers get back in the game.
F i s h y
2nd In Command.
welcome fellow Hoosier. Im just to your east in Columbus. I don't have my tank up and running yet, but I'm helping put a 75 gallon together for a friend and have started purchasing equipment for my own 250 gallon build. Welcome to the party!
Jimbhoy13
7500 Club Member
Welcome to R2R and back to reefing. Sorry to hear of your friend passing. That tank is a great tribute to him.Greetings RSR,
Hello, John here introducing myself from Nashville Indiana. I am returning to the hobby after a 20 year hiatus. Back in the 90's I successfully kept a 120gal long with sps and clams under MH and VHO lighting. I was very proud of that tank but had to let it go for grad school. My wife (Donna) has been reluctant over the following years to let me have another reef tank remembering the work it requires to do it right. Tragedy intervened when a very good friend of ours passed away suddenly. His widow didn't know what to do with his reef tank in Marathon Florida and called me. She explained "I know it's crazy to think of coming to Florida to get this, but I know Mark would have wanted you to have it. I'll understand if you don't want it but thought of you first." You might say not everyone would be willing to drive from Southern Indiana to Marathon Florida, tear down a 120g tank with livestock, load it in a 1/2ton pickup, drive 24 hours straight and set it all back up. I wasn't sure I was, but it was more about honoring my friend that got me into reefing in the first place and introduced me to the Florida Keys over 20 years ago. This led to my passion for scuba diving as well. I was ready to come back to reefing and I couldn't think of a more poetic way of doing than to take my friends tank he had recently setup. His wife was very pleased we decided to take it. While the DIY Canopy/Stand really grew on me, I couldn't fit it in the truck unfortunately and while it fit perfectly into Florida Keys motif, it wouldn't have worked as well in our home. This led me to my journey of setting up a new tank for which I could trust for some years to come. I choose the Red Sea Reefer P500 (132gal total volume) peninsula tank. Marks equipment and livestock gave me a very good head start back into the hobby. We have dedicated the build in his honor and it is coming along nicely. As we all know, patients in the name of the game. I'm very happy with the aquascaping and have added 23 fish after a prolonged QT period. The first batch of corals went in at 5 months from start and doing well. I look forward to posting picks after some growth hits pleasing levels. Below are a few pictures from the move of "Coral Reefer" from Marathon to Nashville Indiana.
Cheers,
John
Mark's "Coral Reefer" build. Mark was a man of limited financial means toward the end of his life and thus did a lot of DYI to which he was very proficient. He didn't have the tank up very long and it ran for another 2 months with minimal husbandry. I was surprised it looked as good as it did. Mark hadn't started adding corals yet and thus looking like a baron 200 lbs pile of Florida live lock with a couple rock anemones and 5 fish including a pair of Ocellaris clownfish we affectionately named Bonnie and Clyde after the trip home (that's another story). All the livestock made the journey given we kept heaters and power heads running during the trip.
A little bit of Mark's handy work on the DIY canopy.
My lovely wife being a real trooper on the tear-down.
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