Tell us about yourself: 

I'm in my 50s with a devoted wife of 30 joyous years and two wonderful grown kids. We live with Snickers, our mini-Doxy adopted from our son, and a very old cat in the foothills of the cascades (Washington) near Black Diamond: AKA out in the Boondocks. We enjoy gardening and last year after taking out our front yard lawn to replace it with a vegetable and flower bed, discovered how easy it is to grow bushels of heirloom tomatoes and other great foods. The neighborhood eats well in the summer. Though a construction subcontractor by profession, we are quite liberal in ideology and try our best to stay green as possible even with the tank's electricity consumption. I have been a water baby since a baby, became the youngest certified open water NAUI diver on record in Portland Oregon at 15. Back then, it was quite an extreme sport. Bad fins and double hose regulators on steel tanks with no pressure gauges. When it became hard to suck air from the tank, you flipped a switch and headed back up. Very cold water in the NW. These days, I'm lazy and only dive in the tropics. Can still free dive as well as when in my teens, though my ears aren't as good :>) Sure love Hawaii, hard to leave our little dog and reef behind or would be traveling a lot more.

How did you get involved in the saltwater hobby?

My father used to have a wholesale pet supply business before I was born, so we always had aquariums in the house. My first tank was a one gallon metaframe when I was 6, and upgraded regularly from there. I used to make hobby money raising freshwater fish and did well with selective breeding of fancy guppies even developing a hot selling strain in the late 60s. Moved on to breeding cichlids, then tough mouthbrooders, and finally set up my first saltwater tank in 1970. Back then, there were no test kits for about anything and one needed to be fairly adept at chemistry to even keep damsels alive in our undergravel filtered crushed marble bed saltwater fish tanks. The newest technology back then was reverse flow filtration and copper. In the 80s, trickle filters became the rage and a few soft corals would live longer than six months. Those who bought hard corals were just wasting their money and destroying the reefs for a short term thrill. Later skimmers came along and limewood airstones were by far the best. As always, water changes were costly but vital. With my dad's old connections and friends, maintaining wholesale accounts for buying livestock and supplies made it an almost affordable hobby. Going retail in this millennium has been quite a culture shock. I used to be able to buy 8 inch rocks covered with many dozens of Ricordia or any other type/color mushrooms for $15. Now that same $15 will get only a single polyp on sale but I digress. I still recall seeing the first tank that had hard coral growing off the rock onto the back of the tank: HARD CORAL PROPAGATING IN AN AQUARIUM!!!! Was told live rock and water changes was the key. Seems that rock I had been flying in from the Keys was actually worth something. Glad I never tossed out the dried up dead stuff. It was kept in a box in the back yard, saved for many years.

Tell us about your tank 

I have a reef ready 180 built by Marty Finn. It has over 300 pounds of mixed live rock and is packed with SPS colonies and frags. Fact is though it looks like a display reef, it is more of a frag tank in disguise. It is lit with three Luminarc Minis with icecap powered 250 watt coralife 10Ks. Also have four each 6" VHO bulbs powered by icecap. Have a 1/4 hp chiller on a Medusa controller, Calcium reactor, ATI Bubblemaster skimmer, and a packed refugium. Have a Medium adult Majestic and pygmy cherub Angels, Hippo, Dejardini, and Yellow tangs, and various small fish. Many different shrimps including a harlequin, and a few other type inverts. Tons of snails.

How did you become involved with Reef Frontiers? 

Cleaning out the house to make some room, I decided to try selling on Craig's list, the base rock that I had been hoarding for many years. Mike SaltyBell bought it for a new tank he was setting up. He said I should check it out and would enjoy it. From the start it blew my mind! Have never seen so much data, so many examples on how to do things right, so many friendly helpful people, in a word, reefer nirvana! Discovered so many old wife's tale false info that I was still holding onto. Keeping marine life was so vastly different, a new world: Reefer Reborn!

What is your reef keeping philosophy? 

My philosophy in general is to be a steward of the planet. Like camping, one should leave it as close to as found if not better. We are leaving it to our childrens' children's children. Man has not done so well to date. Besides the atmosphere and land, the oceans are in bad shape. They are where life began and are what keeps life on earth alive. It isn't as unbreakable as once arrogantly believed. Too many hobbies are destructive of wildlife systems. Sadly, Reef keeping used to be included. More recently tank raising fish, coral and anemone propagation, and better systems has changed this. I now feel that the hobby can be beneficial in lieu of detrimental to the quality of the reefs. Besides as an education example of why the reefs need to be protected, we are involved with coral propagation, rearing clownfish and some inverts, trading and selling tank raised wildlife. I foresee a day when reefs are all protected from exploitation, where they are recovering back to their old glory. If each of us try to buy only fish and other livestock that are proven to prosper in each of our own tanks, to shun that which will easily die or taken irresponsibly, then we are that much closer.

What is your dream tank? 

My current tank is already much more than I could have ever dreamt of. Perhaps the tank aged a year or two more and the corals grown out fuller to large colonies.

Do you have any advice for others? 

If you think you already know everything about what, when,where, or why: it has probably already changed. Ask questions and keep your mind open to new ideas. Though one needs to be watchful, try to be as friendly and trusting as allowable. Cleans hands make a happy life. Peace!