20 Years of Nano-Reef.com - A Birthday Celebration! 🎂

[Draco]

20 years! Wow!! Congrats!! Cheers to another 20!

[devaji108]

yeah 20 years of NR. 

I do love it here, here's to another 20 more.  

[HockeyGuy88]

It's been about 15 years or so since I last posted... Moving our household numerous times devastated my Reef Tank and I just finally gave it up... Fast forward almost a couple decades and my wife gave me an early Father's Day surprise... She wants a Nano Reef in our shared Home Office...She remembers how beautiful it was and wants that again... We have moved halfway across the country, settled into our forever home at the Beach (Delaware Coast) and are ready to do this thing again!... Congrats on the longevity award and looking forward to getting and giving some more very useful information...

 

HockeyGuy88 aka Dr. Frankenstein

[jservedio]

Thanks for the stickers Christopher! As a side note, your handwriting is pretty impeccable!

 

 

 

 

Also added it to my climbing nalgene so I can bring Nano-Reef on the rock and up in the mountains with me, at least for a while until it looks like the other stickers!

 

[Daniel92481]

34 minutes ago, jservedio said:

Thanks for the stickers Christopher! As a side note, your handwriting is pretty impeccable!

 

 

 

 

Also added it to my climbing nalgene so I can bring Nano-Reef on the rock and up in the mountains with me!

 

Wow awesome stickers! How do I get one? 

[Jim_i]

Stickers rock!  Thanks Chris...

[seabass]

19 hours ago, Daniel92481 said:

Wow awesome stickers! How do I get one? 

You have to eat a mouthful of fish food.

Yay! I earned my Nano-Reef sticker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just kidding, you have to take a pic with your face in your reef tank,

or with a mouthful of salt mix.

 

 

 

 

Nah, all you have to do is to write NANO-REEF on your forehead with permanent marker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm just messing with you.  You typically have to win them (in a contest, or a giveaway thread like this).

 

P.S. Thanks for the memories nano-paul!

[Daniel92481]

40 minutes ago, seabass said:

You have to eat a jar of fish food...

Yay! I earned my Nano-Reef sticker.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just kidding, you have to take a pic with your face in your reef tank,

or with a mouthful of salt mix.

 

 

 

 

Nah, all you have to do is to write NANO-REEF on your forehead with permanent marker.

 

 

 

 

 

I'm just messing with you.  You typically have to win them (in a contest, or a giveaway thread like this).  However, thanks for the memories nano-paul!

Thanks for the laughs! I definitely won’t be doing any of that! 
 

I thought you were going to say something easy like catch a fish with your bare hands blind folded…like on the movie blood sport haha 

[C Jerome]

@Christopher Marks Thank you you for having the vision to set up this forum and resource for everyone.  I started lurking around the fall of 2001 and built up the courage to join and actually post in April 2002.  My first nano, pictured below, was an Eclipse 6 which I modded the lights and filter.  I only almost burned my parents house down, once, with the DIY electrical work to get the power compacts and ballasts all working.  This was the first of several tanks... next moving to a 15L, 2.5 gallon I set up at college, 5.5 gallon frag tank, 14 gallon bio cube, 29 gallon bio cube and currently a 24 gallon IM Lagoon.  Along the way I also started a business by accident, Nimble Nano.  When I had that 2.5 gallon tank at college, I was making a mess trying to clean the glass with a razor and over flowing the tank on my desk, the Nimble was born over winter break of my sophomore year in college.  Posted step by step direction on the forum for everyone to make their own and surprisingly people just wanted to buy one.  

There have been ups and downs with the hobby, the worst being when I lost my BC29 to a heat stress crash while I was out of town, there was nothing I could do.  I lost the majority of my critters, some of which I had for more than 10 years by that point.  

Looking back at the last 20 years of reef keeping, it has been a lot of fun and there has been so much change both on the equipment and live stock side.  When I look at live stock prices on line and locally now, my jaw almost hits the ground.  'Back in the day' things cost less and fellow hobbyists practically gave frags away for a pittance.  Part of it could have been they were just being nice to this high school kid, but I still think they cost less then now.  On the equipment side, back then there was none!  You wanted it, you built it or searched for something from big tank life that would work in the nano.  I put together and wired all the lights for my tanks, including the insane 70w MH over a 2.5gallon, at the very start of LEDs I built a custom array for the BC29 with individual CREE LEDs.  No fancy lights were available in the beginning, you were a real KING if you had some T5s over your breeder tank.  

I don't know if all these changes are good or bad, you can open a catalog and order everything you need today and more.  I kind of like that hobbyists had to boot strap and DIY so many things.  That has been one of my favorite parts of the hobby, thinking, designing, building, solving problems.  

With that said, after I write this I am going to order a new connected dosing pump and some all for reef, for my tank.  The air pump powered ATO with DIY wired float switch will stay though.  

 

C. Jerome

[Lingwendil]

I've been lurking since 2002, and joined in 2004. I can't believe I've been on this site since I was a wee high schooler 😳 

 

It's crazy how busy the site used to be! Probably the first real resource for keeping smaller tanks, everyone thought it was impossible to have success with anything small back then. Now nano tanks are the rule it seems!

[Aqua Splendor]