Bedroom Biology Experiment

This is how it all began.

About five years ago when I lived with my parents, I got into the saltwater fish keeping hobby.  I pretty much jumped in feet first, which was not exactly a good thing.  Anyone out there who is an experienced aquarist already knows this: building a contained ecosystem is something that takes time if it is to be done right.

I ended up making a lot of trips to the pet store, and buying a lot of live rock, and a lot of fish.  First off, I have to say that the bio load in my tank was too high.  I had 13 fish in my tank ranging from damsels and blennies to angels and tangs.  Now that I have acquired more knowledge, I think I would be able to handle this bio load by doing more frequent water changes and having better filtration. 

To make a long story short, I ended up losing a lot of fish throughout the whole process, and I pretty much wasted hundreds of dollars, if not more.  A lot, if not all of this, could have been avoided if I had done my research before just jumping right in.  Not only did I lose money, but I ended up killing innocent creatures.  That is what bothers me the most  :(

As I was going through the trials of owning a saltwater tank, I found a forum of much more experienced aquarists who saved my tail on many occasions.  In the end, I made what turned out to be a fatal mistake during a large water change, and consequently ended up losing all of my fish.  I had to move out of my parent’s place, so I ended up selling my tank, live rock and all my equipment to a friend. 

This was a few years ago now, and I have since gotten back into the hobby.  I learned my lessons, and this time, I chose to do things the right way.  So, with my limited budget that I had at the time, I decided to start up what I called my bedroom biology experiment.  I went out and bought a 13 gallon plastic tote, some crushed coral, some aquarium salt, a saltwater hydrometer, a filter, a heater, a thermometer, some marine fish food and about 1 pound of live rock.  I fed the tank some of the food every other day, did a 10% water change every 3-4 days and every month I did a 30% water change.  This was all to ensure that my tank was properly cycled before adding any livestock to it.  I continued this for 3 months and then added two small damsels to my “tank”.  

When I went to purchase my fish at the pet store, one of the workers said “Aren’t you the one with the tote on your bedroom floor?”  I was slightly embarrassed, but I said that yes, that was indeed me.  She giggled a bit, but I was not swayed.   A week or so later, I came back and bought a little bit more live rock, bringing the total to three pounds!  Woohoo!

This was in about mid February of this year.  I do not want to chronicle the entire process in one post, so I will break things down into bits and give “updates” until I reach what is now my tank’s current status, and then I will continue from there.  I hope you enjoy!

**Today is now November 9th, 2012 and I have gone through this blog, deleting posts that I did not deem to be very interesting.  The promised updates fell into this category as most people who read this really didn't care too much about the fish.  To sum it all up, I ended up moving everything into a tank, then got a friend who was really interested in it.  He stated his own tank, and when I moved, I gave him all of my fish and equipment and I now no longer have a tank, yet again.  I figure I will wait until I have a more permanent home set up.**

Thanks for "listening."