Hi All
Curious to see how long some of you have been in the hobby. What was your first tank? what equipment did you run back then?
For myself i started in 1990.... been in the hobby for 31 years... im an old salt!
My first tank was a 55g acrylic tank with two 400w iwasaki 6500k metal halide bulbs. The tank had a hang on the back overflow box into a 25g sump that housed... and i kid you not a 5' tall downdraft skimmer. I had that tank running with mostly soft corals and a few stonies. Then i met Steve Tyree and that's who started me on my SPS journey. Steve would go down to the wholesaler in LA let me know of any cool SPS and then he would ship them up to me... ah the good ol days.
Then i took a little side trip in the late 90's into giant clam breeding with a guy from Tacoma. We started culturing our own zooxanthellae for the giants clams. (got the culture from a sacrificial giant clam by cutting up the mantle tissue and isolating the algae.) We did have luck getting clams to spawn, but where never able to get them to grow out much past a couple mm's in size. Im guessing lack of appropriate foods back then.
For a few years i was the club president and met a lot of great folks through this hobby
Let's here what you guys have done!