About
Hello, my name is Lisa and I live in Derby, UK with my family. I have a degree in Applied Biology and once upon a time I was a scientist working in a laboratory. Now I'm a housewife and I'm looking to finally get rid of my kids and begin enjoying life again, lol! I have a real passion for all things reef related.
I set up my first reef tank in 1994 (a 5ft systemised tank) following years of keeping freshwater tropicals, I ran it for 8 years until we moved house at the end of 2002. A new house naturally meant a larger tank so a custom 7ft tank was set up. This one ran for a couple of years, during which time I also set up a nano in the kitchen, a pico in the study and a sexy shrimp breeding set up in the utility room. Talk about reefing out of control. Sadly my husband was made redundant in 2005 and after much agonising I decided that it all had to go. At that time I quite clearly remember stating that I would never again set up another reef tank.
Skip forward to summer 2016 and how the memory dims. My eldest son commented that it was about time that I set up another reef tank and once that idea was seeded in to my brain there was just no shifting it. I decided that the tank should be a small, easy to run and stress free (yeah, as if such a thing were possible!). After much researching I opted for a Red Sea Reefer 170 and here we are now (October 2016). I must say I’m as excited to set up this tank as I ever was setting up the custom 7ft monster. I didn’t realise quite how much I’d actually missed reefing.
The plan for this tank is to stock small peaceful reef safe fish only, such as gobies and cardinals, a good variety of crustaceans, because I love them, and a handful of corals. Perhaps a clam may somehow sneak in there too. The aim is not to cram the tank with too many corals but introduce a smaller number of species and let them grow out into nice sized colonies (as far as you can in a Reefer 170 anyway). I wonder if I can mangage to stay strong and keep to that plan. We'll see....
Update: I managed to stay strong(ish) for 3 years and then I had to upgrade the tank. 😆
I set up my first reef tank in 1994 (a 5ft systemised tank) following years of keeping freshwater tropicals, I ran it for 8 years until we moved house at the end of 2002. A new house naturally meant a larger tank so a custom 7ft tank was set up. This one ran for a couple of years, during which time I also set up a nano in the kitchen, a pico in the study and a sexy shrimp breeding set up in the utility room. Talk about reefing out of control. Sadly my husband was made redundant in 2005 and after much agonising I decided that it all had to go. At that time I quite clearly remember stating that I would never again set up another reef tank.
Skip forward to summer 2016 and how the memory dims. My eldest son commented that it was about time that I set up another reef tank and once that idea was seeded in to my brain there was just no shifting it. I decided that the tank should be a small, easy to run and stress free (yeah, as if such a thing were possible!). After much researching I opted for a Red Sea Reefer 170 and here we are now (October 2016). I must say I’m as excited to set up this tank as I ever was setting up the custom 7ft monster. I didn’t realise quite how much I’d actually missed reefing.
The plan for this tank is to stock small peaceful reef safe fish only, such as gobies and cardinals, a good variety of crustaceans, because I love them, and a handful of corals. Perhaps a clam may somehow sneak in there too. The aim is not to cram the tank with too many corals but introduce a smaller number of species and let them grow out into nice sized colonies (as far as you can in a Reefer 170 anyway). I wonder if I can mangage to stay strong and keep to that plan. We'll see....
Update: I managed to stay strong(ish) for 3 years and then I had to upgrade the tank. 😆