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So, I've kind of been out of the reef keeping world for almost a year and a half. In the spring/summer of 2009 I was the happiest I had ever been with my tank, I was running zeo and the tank was perfect, water was clear, fish were happy and I was stocking up on SPS that was growing and colouring up like crazy. Then in the fall same year I had a disaster. I came home from work and wondered why I didn't see the glow of the lights in the stairwell.. I went downstairs and found that a blown heater tripped a breaker. I had not been to the basement in well over 48 hours so it could have happened anytime during that period. No heat, no circulation, nothing (I wasn't smart enought to put redundant equipment on a seperate breaker) Anyhow.. it was a mess.. coral dead.. fish dead. I got the gear running again and went to bed, I spent the next night pulling out death.

I was lucky that my purple tang I had kept for 5 years was still alive.. barely.. along with two clowns and surprisingly their BTA. At this point I thought about draining the water and walking away because not only was I heart broken we had just had our second child and I was so up to my armpits in bottes and poopy diapers but I kept the tank going... but I neglected it bad.. I changed water maybe 3 times from then to this x-mas and the glass was covered with so much coraline that you couldn't even see in. Well... to make a long story longer, my folks came out to visit at xmas and my dad was disheartened when he saw the tank and asked why after it looked so good that I gave up on it. So each night while he was here he helped me scrape the glass clean with razors, helped my do a couple big water changes.. and all in all got it back to a respectable condition. Well now.. I have the bug again.. I forgot how nice it is to have a slice of the ocean in your home.

I've been lurking for the past week here as I always enjoyed coming to canreef. It is nice to see some familiar names in the posts, and also a lot of new folks which is always great to see new awesome tanks.