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Our Reef


jeffyhound
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Our display is a SCA 150. It is plumbed into the basement/fishroom. The main system is about 600 gallons, and I have a 55 set up for QT. The Sump is a 100 gallon rubbermade tub, and I use 3 Jebao DC pumps as the returns. I bought a 4 foot tall Geo skimmer when a local store closed, and have two 1/2 hp chiller/heaters from Ecosmart. Our 150 usually runs 2 CP90 crossflow fans for movement, but in that pic they are down soaking for cleaning. I run a maxspect razor for lights, supplemented by a reef brite ho blue led. all the grow out tanks are lit with the black boxes. I dose my own two part. A friend of mine works in Minnesota for Battel Labs and gets me lab grade stuff for his cost to buy and ship them. I use 2 36watt UV's, a geo upflow reactor with carbon or gfo if needed. It doesn't run all the time, just when something is going on that needs it. Well, that is kind of the basics.

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I am actually just coming out of my last issue. I had some hair algae getting too carried away in our nem tank. Treated with flu on. It killed the hair, but also my caluperra. By the time I was noticing cyano kicking off my nitrates were thru the roof. Needless to say a bunch of water changes over about 3 weeks until my fuge could catch back up.

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17 minutes ago, jeffyhound said:

thank you. i am thankful for the room, and even more thankful for a wife that hasn't left me yet :)

 

Lol. My wife encourages me to buy stuff for my tank she enjoys it just as much 

Edited by Birdman
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Thank you. Our first tank was the 75 that is on the back wall. It ran for a few months, but our house isnt insulated well, and it kept getting too hot. the uneven temps just weren't cutting it, so i got this brilliant idea that the basement temps were cooler, and if i did the sump down there it would help keep the tank cool. about 8 years ago i added the sump in the basement. with the bigger pump, the in sump skimmer and pumps for the reactors, it really didn't solve the heat problem. plus i was still shopping the big box stores, and getting sold at everyone of them. by that i mean they will sell you what they have over what you need to make money. there was a couple guys at aquarium adventure that knew reefing, but they would still sell you. same with jacks. after about a year of spending thousands and still not able to keep stuff alive long term, i overheard someone talking about reef systems while we were at aquarium adventure. we went to see Todd on a Sunday, not realizing they closed at 4. They closed the store around us, and Todd stayed after and talked with Tina and I for hours. Todd even emailed some with me after that. He helped get me away from being sold, and to put together a system that actually worked. I also vowed to never let stores sell me shit and that I would learn this or quit. That has kind of kept up from there. Tina and I have been keeping our reef system for 9 years now. I joke about my wife, but she knows how to take care of the tanks, she just isn't good with all the names of stuff. Let me get some pictures, and if I am not boring you to death, I can continue  the story

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16 minutes ago, jeffyhound said:

Thank you. Our first tank was the 75 that is on the back wall. It ran for a few months, but our house isnt insulated well, and it kept getting too hot. the uneven temps just weren't cutting it, so i got this brilliant idea that the basement temps were cooler, and if i did the sump down there it would help keep the tank cool. about 8 years ago i added the sump in the basement. with the bigger pump, the in sump skimmer and pumps for the reactors, it really didn't solve the heat problem. plus i was still shopping the big box stores, and getting sold at everyone of them. by that i mean they will sell you what they have over what you need to make money. there was a couple guys at aquarium adventure that knew reefing, but they would still sell you. same with jacks. after about a year of spending thousands and still not able to keep stuff alive long term, i overheard someone talking about reef systems while we were at aquarium adventure. we went to see Todd on a Sunday, not realizing they closed at 4. They closed the store around us, and Todd stayed after and talked with Tina and I for hours. Todd even emailed some with me after that. He helped get me away from being sold, and to put together a system that actually worked. I also vowed to never let stores sell me shit and that I would learn this or quit. That has kind of kept up from there. Tina and I have been keeping our reef system for 9 years now. I joke about my wife, but she knows how to take care of the tanks, she just isn't good with all the names of stuff. Let me get some pictures, and if I am not boring you to death, I can continue  the story

Please continue the story. 

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There are no good hobbiest shops on the west side of columbus, and after getting bad advice, bad livestock and losing thousands, we decided to open our own shop out of our basement. We bought 12 35 gallon commercial tanks from a store that was closing in Lancaster. Then Phishy business was changing to needle wheel skimmers, so we bought a 48" geo becket skimmer from them. I built stands for 8 of the tanks, plumbed them into the big sump and we got out license. Lincoln Village Reef was borne. All of that went fairly well. There was a bit of a learning curve with all the water coming and going. We did lose stuff now and again, but we were doing a little business. The problem was it was a little business and certainly the time and energy it took wasn't very smart money wise. What really upset me was I would invest all my time and effort into teaching people, only to have them go buy their stuff online or at east side shops. Then we decided to expand into fish, because one of the biggest things our customer's couldn't get from LVR was fish. That is where it all went south like Sherman. Wholesale isn't like retail. The only guarantee is that they will arrive alive. Our losses were quickly out-running the little money we made off the shop. There was a learning curve there as well, and now days when I get fish my losses are 15-20% compared to 50% back then. Of course now, I am also paying retail again. So the final straw for LVR was this couple from Newark. We spent hours teaching them how to do it. He asked me to get him reef foundation a and b, so i did. Then he came to pick them up, and said he had told me reef energy. I had the emails, where he had said foundation, but smiled and put those on the shelf and ordered the energy. Then he wanted a reactor. I always matched BRS pricing, someone had reported me for selling bellow that and BRS asked me not to. So, I got the reactor in, called the guy, and he said another shop was going to sell it to him a couple dollars cheaper. I was getting pretty tired working full time and doing this. It pissed me off, because once more he asked me to get it for him and now he was beating me up. I told him he needed to go to the other shop, which is now a brick and morter, but at the time was a basement shop like us. My wife and I sat over a fire pit, and after two years decided it just wasnt worth all the headaches, and we closed LVR. Oh the headaches werent over! opening a business is pretty easy. Closing one; not so much. My wife fought and fought to get the tax people to understand we were closed and that they needed to quit sending us bills for sales tax payments. You see, even if you don't sell a damn thing, you will be billed a calculated amount for sales tax. My wife finally had to go down town to their office and sit in front of someone to get it fixed. So LVR finally died. Here is our old logo and a picture of our 75 before the upgrade. It had been set up for four years at this point, but that is the next part of all of this, and I need to get mowing done before i go on.

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well Birdman, i hope it ends well. Tina and I did a quiet close. We didn't just quit. We sold down our stock, and stopped talking of facebook and advertising in any way. Slowly, i got it down to 2 of the 35gallons, our 75 and a 50 gallon rubbermade i used as a frag tank. people we knew would still come and buy frags off me, so i never completely stopped. I just didnt do the shop any more.

our next big project was the upgrade to a 150. frankly, i love this shit, and i love meeting everyone and helping when i can. it has never been about the money for me. it is my passion. with the shop done, i think my wife let me upgrade as much because i was depressed over it as anything. SCA had a black friday sale, and had a 5' 150 with two returns and a supply for 999.00. It is low iron glass, euro braced, rimless and heavy as hell. i ordered it with a stand and canopy, and it was 1500 delivered. When it came, we took a weekend, tore our 75 down, and put everything in a 50 gallon rubbermade. We moved the 75 to the basement, and set it back up down there. That was a long day, and the next weekend I worked on running the piping down to the basement. It has two one inch drains and a one inch return. You will find out I am too tight to spend big bucks on the high end stuff, and i am a fan of cheaper brands. I did splurge some on the lights up here. I have 2 maxspect razors on our main tank. For our return pump and our skimmer pump i use a jebao dc18000 pump. the two are 8 years old and i have a spare i keep in case. Believing in the jebaos i have two cp90 crossflows in the 150, that are down in the basement at the moment soaking in vinegar. I try to clean them every couple months, and put just cheapy fans in while i soak and clean them.

in the basement we have our old 75 and another a buddy gave me when he upgraded. There are 3 of the 35's from the shop left, and 3 frag trays. Everything is plumbed into our sump, so i only have to dose one sump, and it takes care of everything. It also makes water changes easy. I have a pump i plug in and it pumps water down the drain. Then I just pump salt mix back in out of one of our brute trash cans. For dosing I use two BRS 50ml doser pumps that are timed by a reef keeper light. I have a friend that works for Battell. He is a chemist, and moved to wisconsin when we were young. he sells me lab grade calcium and soda ash, along with all the trace elements i like at cost. I use two ecosmart chillers for heating and cooling. i try to do a main and back-up as much as i can. When Phishy Business was changing to needle wheel skimmers, I bought a 48" geo skimmer that takes care of that. I run two 36warr UV's, and all the basement stuff is powered by two greech pond pumps.

so here we are today. i sell frags of what i grow, and i order fish in a retail from live aquaria. i put them through 6 weeks of qt, and try to resell them for about double what the cost. of course you can buy them off live aquaria cheaper, but then you have to either take a chance or do a qt. For some they are willing to pay the extra to have a fish they can take home and put in feeling good about their health. I also keep pumps, foods, lights and other equipment around in case something dies. I offer those for sale, and again you can go on amazon and beat my prices for sure, but for some people they will pay the little extra because they support me and because i have them when they need.

Enter Covid. I have been laid off since may, and our frags help make ends meet. For now I am limited on what i do because i am no longer a shop, but that may change in time. If i can build this into something that can enable me to scrape by, i may get my license and reopen LVR. It has to show me it can make enough for me to live on, or i will have to go back to work. In the meantime, if you want to support a local reefer I have frags and equipment for sale. I have also gotten pretty good at this, and i am happy to help anyone that i can. That is our story, and i hope to get to know you all a lot better.

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Awesome setup and story. Hope it all works out! Always up for some frags! You might have good luck opening back up, with phishy business closed, and rivers to reefs not looking too hot and aquarium adventure a joke you have a good chance for a quality place

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thank you Waffen. Is that a history nod, because i love history? Anyway, enough about the past. Right now Tina and I have had our reef nine years. She can tend to it if I can't for some reason. My wife knows the basics, and together we really love this stuff. We grow corals, and offer frags of those. They range from 15-25, and cover everything from gsp, xenia to oregon tort and bonsai. We usually have a few fish that have been through a full 6 week qt for real, not just us saying so. our frags as a whole are healthy and pest free. The only pest we have are asterina stars and some hair algae. I work hard to make sure our frags are free of those. If it comes from BRS i match their suggested retail. If it doesn't I use a 20% mark up. We are a Rod's dealer, and I have just added coral feast with some help from them. i am currently working on expanding into the fresh water world, but it is a work in progress. again, i am paying retail on a lot of this as i am not an official business at the moment. i have wholesalers that will work with me including coral feast when the time comes. i am trying to gauge whether i can earn a live off this or not. The answer at the moment is not even close, but i know unemployment with extensions will go through the year, and i am hoping by next year to take it to the next level.

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Wow awesome story.  I am working on building a woodworking business that I formalized last winter, it is full of ups and downs for sure.  There are several here actively or interested in buying pre QT’d fish including myself.  When life throws me a break I’ll be looking you up!  Thanks for sharing the detail!

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