A hard goodbye

[asylumdown]

To my saltwater friends:

After defining my identity around the keeping of things aquatic for the past... 8 years? The time has come to take a pause. Not say goodbye, just... take a pause.

For the better part of a decade this forum was the first and last thing I looked at every day. It was also the place I'd come to talk, think, and argue for hours at a time when I really should have been doing just about anything else. The conversation, debates, knowledge, and shared passion I found here made me feel like less of a weirdo for being such an incredible nerd. It showed me that you really could paint with life, and that art isn't just boring pictures you hang on a wall.

However, as I'm sure (hope?) some of you have noticed, I fell of the digital cliff 5 months ago, precisely when we sold the house we built around my 275 gallon SPS baby and moved in to a place with *gasp* no tank. While I'm never going to stop reading fish tank blogs, or exhaling in cathartic relief whenever I catch a whiff of the briny deep, the time has come once again to make a major life change. Instead of getting another tank, we'll be getting a "real" baby, and moving our family to a much smaller, less aquatic friendly home in the sky in downtown Toronto.

Yes, I'll buy season's passes to the Ripley aquarium and yes I'll tell myself that I could have picked better lights, coral, and fish combinations every time we go. No, I'll never stop being a reefer, or stop appreciating what this community has given me the past few years.

Till we meet again, my fishy friends!

Adam