The Phone Call

I had been working late.. again.. and had called my wife to let her know that I was on my way home. She told me that she had a surprise waiting for me, but that she wasn't going to tell me. When I arrived home I simply acted disinterested until she burst out with the news. "My boss's neighbor is giving away his marine aquarium and he wanted to know if we would be interested, I already told him "yes"."

This was fantastic news. I had been wanting to set up a marine tank since I was in high school, when I had stumbled upon an old 30 gallon glass tank that had been up in the attic. That tank became a very decent fresh water planted tank. The fish that I had used to cycle the tank, black phantom tetras, lived until I had graduated college. After I left home my father had given them to a local doctor's office where they perished after a power failure had left the office tank unattended over a long weekend. When they died the fish were over six years old.

After college I toyed with the idea of setting up another tank but was never living anywhere long enough to justify the effort. I had given up the idea of eny kind of set up, and had decided to wait until retirement.

Six months ago my wife changed that plan with a phone call telling me that she was going to buy an aquarium. I begged her not to do it, and realizing that I was going to lose the argument begged her to get an aquarium that was at least 40 gallons.

When I came home my wife had already started unpacking a 10 gallon kit complete with a plastic treasure chest.

I was not happy, but we were able to compromise, and I set up a planted tank... my official return to the hobby.

That 10 gallon freshwater tank was fine until my wife realized that we would be limited to about 6 small fish.

We began looking for a larger tank. We dicided that if we were going to do it again that we would go all out with a very large marine set up.

I began scouring the internet looking for a used aquarium, and I dusted off all of my older aquarium books and magazines. I also began to read up the more current forums and web sites. I was within a few weeks of making a move on one of the used tanks I had been watching, when the good news came.

The week prior to picking up our marine tank we began to draw up the logistical plan to move and set up the new tank. This plan included moving the 10 gallon fresh water tank. Midway through the week my wife found a 30 gallon bow-front for $50, and stated that we might as well upgrade the freshwater since we were going to the effort of moving it. I wasn't sure that I agreed with the logic, but the tank included a pretty decent filter and ballast, and the price was great.

When the move weekend arrived Saturday was designated freshwater day. We selected our rocks and driftwood, installed a soil and fluorite substrate, transferred a few of the plants, and stated a CO2 bubbler.

Sunday was move day! We started at 9am with a trip to Walmart, to procure empty 5 gallon water bottles. We had also gotten several small styrofoam containers free from our Local Fish Store(LFS).

We arrived at our benefactor's house at about 1030 and immediately began to breakk the tank down, siphoning off the first ten gallons into the water bottles, and putting the live rock into the foam coolers. The coral went into a 5 gallon plastic cooler, and the two clowns and the pajama cardinal went into a large 20 gallon plastic cooler. We left about 10 gallons in the tank along with the yellow watchman goby (we could not coax him out of hiding), and the shrimp,

When we arrived home I began refilling the tank with the 10 gallons of old tank water and began to mix up new water (a huge risk due to the rapid change in water chemistry). We got enough water into the tank to allow us to start the heater, filter, and skimmer, and then set about cleaning off the live rock that had been utterly infested with green algae.

Once the temperature began to creep up again I acclimated the fish and placed the coral towards the front of the tank. I epoxied the live rock into place along the back wall, doing my best to hide the filter intake and the heater.