Hi from Richmond VA (quick intro)

Hey fellow aquatic nuts.

I've been doing aquariums for about 15 years or so, although the marine bug didn't bite until a couple years back.

I finally broke down our last freshwater tank last year (125gal with a few 6" koi, 12" and 18" plecos, and plants... the laziest freshwater tank I ever ran!)

I'm currently running a 180 gallon marine tank that I originally set up to be a FOWLR but started going coral. It has a 40gal sump originally setup with 5 gallons-worth of bioballs with custom spray bars that I've finally weened the tank off of, coralife's largest skimmer (which I must add is crap out of the box, like most coralife products . . . replaced the pump when it died and cut off the pressure-based outlet and converted to a riser) with a couple titanium heaters and 2400gph worth of return pumps. I've also added a 75 gallon refugium to the setup, with a deep sand bed, chaeto, and caulerpa. I originally ran coralife's 400w moonlight pc fixture, but to be honest it just didn't put out adequate light. I supplimented with 200w of HOT5 (which to my untrained eye lit the tank better then the PCs... but our eyes are most sensitive to color spectrums that corals dont thrive from so that doesn't mean much) and eventually converted to the dark side of metal halides - now running three 250watt 10k and two 150watt 20k HQIs (moved HOT5s to the refugium). Our current swimmers are a 6" majestic angel, 7" blonde naso tang, 3" sailfin tang, 2.5" flame angel, 2.5" mandarin, 2.5" black/white (aussie) clown. As far as non-fish are concerned we've just beginning... with a crocea clam and some montipora digitata.

I've got a soft spot for marine angels, puffers, and acropora, and my passion for the hobby is actually on the hardware side, although my top priority is to give every specimen the best chance it can have for a healthy, fulfilling life.

Outside of the wet hobby, I also have a racing-specced roadster that I used to track monthly until I met my wife a couple years back, and tend to be a videogame-aholic.

As far as professional life's concerned, I'm the Sr Database Administrator for the Performance Technology team at Wellpoint(/Anthem/Trigon/whatever the big insurance company's called in your state)

I'm a bit young (28), only married a couple years... and 4 months away from being a dad

 

Thanks And yes... been exclusively working in MSSQL for a long time, The last time I did webmaster work I was using MySQL... but it's probably an entirely different animal now (it's been many years)

 

I personally avoid both of them.

pet club's actually where i picked up my 180... after i purchased, i realized they didn't 'have enough salt, sand, large enough heaters, skimmers, lighting, or anything to support the tank that they sold me!) The last time I went up to pet club a couple months back it looked like all of their saltwater tanks were empty . . .

azalea doesn't appear very well stocked either, and the owner's got quite a temper. he started cursing someone out when I had my little niece with me.

Fishworld on the other hand (on busy st near courthouse/midlo) is INCREDIBLY well stocked with very healthy specimens and extremely knowledgable staff who are all experts in the field. The owner, Joe, has been running the store over 20 years and he's one of the best resources I've ever met. I dont buy equipment there (expensive) but they are always my first stop for fish/corals... much cheaper to pay a little more and get a very healthy undiseased specimen.

I occasionally go by Richmond Aquarium (since it's not far from my house) ... much better selection and stocking then azalea or pet club but they frequently have ich outbreaks in their tanks, run hyposalinic, and staff's not nearly as educated. Gear is also expensive... one plus is that they frequently get in very rare fish nearly impossible to acquire at other stores.

When I'm up for a drive, atlantis aquarium over in north/westend is also pretty nice ... their coral selection is the best and equipment typically runs much cheaper then the other two. Fish selection on the other hand isn't quite as good although they normally have at least a few uber-rare specimens over $500... not that i could afford them The staff there's also pretty well educated.

 

BTW I did assume SW LFS... the stores I listed are all SW only, and both azalea & petclub are both (in my opinion) well stocked with FW.. it's their SW sections (and azalea's owner) that are my complaints

 

I wouldn't have been as sour about petclub not having ANY equipment appropriate for the tank they sold me (no lights, no skimmers, no pumps, not enough sand, not enough salt...), if they didn't try to talk me into paying 2x retail to order my lights through them (which I promptly refused)

I'm willing to pay 30% over normal going rates for my equipment to support LFS, and I only buy livestock local... but I order my equipment online most of the time because most of the SW LFS have ridiculous markups ($400 lights for $1200, $50 pumps for $300, etc etc)

I'll be upset if the LFSs go out of business because of internet sales, but they are bringing it on themselves.