Tell us about yourself: 

Well, I am 28 yrs old and my wife and I moved to Seattle from Denver last year. We are both medical residents. My wife is training at Children's Hospital to become a pediatrician, and I get shuffled around between Harborview, the VA, University, Children's and Virginia Mason learning to become a Urologist. We have loved our time here in this wonderful city, and thought Seattle would be a nice stopping point for a few years before returning to Denver. However, we have fallen in love with this city and may live here forever as a result. We have been married almost 2 years, and our only child is our 4 month old puppy, Cooper.

How did you get involved in the saltwater hobby?

It is funny, my story is so typical for this hobby. I started out with a 55 gal tank and kept tropical fish for about a year, I then slowly branched to mellow cichlids, then to aggressive cichlids and Oscars, then I got bored with them, bought a 40 gal tank for the aggressive fish and transitioned to Discus. It was at that point that I really wanted to go salt, but didn't feel I had the experience to do so. Discus were kind of my testing ground, figuring that if I could keep them, then I could keep salt water fish. The trial went well and about 5 months later I sold all the cichlids, moved the Discus to the 40 gal tank and started acquiring salt water equipment.

Tell us about your tank? 

When we moved here from Denver, I saw it as the perfect chance to upgrade my tank. My 55 gal tank was totally ghetto. Crappy homemade stand and canopy, super loud fan, external overflow where the water CRASHED off the back of the tank, CRASHED down below into the sump, my homemade refugium CRASHED water back into the sump….my wife hated it all. So when we moved, I took about 6-7 months, had IAP build me my tank, had Dave Hicks build my stand/canopy and took my time designing everything.

Tank: 60Lx22Wx30H acrylic. Eurobrace top.

Lighting: Three 250 watt ReefOptix III DE pendants with PFO magnetic ballasts. I also have four 110watt 46.5" VHOs that are all actinic. I have just introduced the third MH and hope to change my bulbs and ditch the VHOs. Bulbs are 10k AB DE bulbs.

Sump/Refugium: Had glass panels cut and converted my old 55 gal tank into a fuge/sump. My macro of choice is Chaeto.

Skimmer: Aqua C EV-150.

Return pump: Mag 12

Chiller: ˝ HP aquamedic chiller

Calcium Reactor: DIY calcium reactor. Design was basically copied from DJ88 on Reefcentral with a few modifications.

How did you become involved with Reef Frontiers? 

The reef club in Denver was very active and when I moved here, I continued to follow reefcentral, but it was actually john at IAP who recommended the site and referred me to the local club.

What is your reef keeping philosophy? 

Well, I guess I have tried to keep things varied and appealing. Almost all of my corals have been grown out from frags, some of them were tiny when I got them. I also have a lot of "rescue" corals. I would rather purchase a few small frags than one large colony. I like watching things grow and prefer buying them from local colonies rather than wild colonies. I also have really tried to make the new tank quiet as that was my wife's biggest complaint before.

What is your dream tank? 

I am pretty happy with the size of my current tank. I wish I had more room for equipment and such. I am envious of those out there that have a fish room behind or below the tank. My current space just didn't allow it. In the future, I could very easily see designing a house with an in-wall tank and plenty of space behind. Beyond that, I would like to see my tank super stable with everything doing well. I am still working out the bugs of where different colonies like to live.

Do you have any advice for others? 

Go slow and ask a lot of questions. Patience is the key to this hobby. It is so tempting to purchase something now to "get me by," but in the end, you can waste a lot of money on purchasing things twice because you made a mistake the first time around. This hobby is expensive enough, but having a site around like ReefFrontiers and a club like they have here, is a great opportunity for newbies and veterans to ask plenty of questions.

As a second piece of advice, I have purchased almost all of my equipment, corals and livestock "used." There are a few exceptions, but you can't beat well established live rock and the cost is so different for used things as they are new at LFS or even on-line.