Tampa Bay Saltwater - From a newbie's perspective

[olsonjl]

Testimonial – Part One

I’d like to give my opinion of the ‘the package’ from the perspective of a greenhorn. This is me and my wife’s first foray into saltwater reefing. Coming into the hobby with zilch experience we wanted the most painless ‘plug-n-play’ scenario that we could find. If we can make a salt tank work, than anybody can.

We scoured ‘How To’ sites, books, and watched Youtube videos. But until you actually jump in feet first nothing can fully prepare you. We’ve made our share of naïve mistakes. But at the end of the day, we have succeeded (so far), and the thing I credit mostly for this success is finding Tampa Bay Saltwater. Setting up a saltwater tank can’t be any more dummy-proof than when using Richard’s tried and true formula.

We spent gobs of money on equipment. Then we spent gobs more when we had to repurchase nearly everything, because we found out the hard way that the cheap equipment is cheap for a reason. Oh, barnacles!, did we waste money. But the way we see it, if we are going to spend so much on stuff outside and around the tank, why would we want to skimp on the stuff that goes INSIDE the tank? With the investment we were making, we couldn’t afford to fail. The funny thing is, although at first glance ‘the package’ seems expensive – look at what all you get! It’s super, super cheap compared to the alternatives. Go ahead and add things up separately and compare the tab. Doing things this way isn’t just easier, and more beautiful, but it’s cheaper by far!

When we looked at the freight prices, we decided it would be silly not to go pick it up ourselves. The money we would have spent on shipping could be better spent on a vacation. So we loaded up the hatchback and made a trip from Texas to Tampa. Tampa is an awesome tourist location so we spent a day at the beach and I even did salinity tests in the ocean where ‘the package’ would come from because I was curious. We had a great time and got a nice tan, all while saving money by picking up our shipment ourselves. Richard was awesome. He accomidated our needs. We set a pick up time and he had it packaged up and ready to go on time. He super duper bagged everything and not a drop of water left the boxes on the way home. We bought the 180 gallon package, and the first ‘shipment’ was 17 boxes! Holy mackerel. And this was only the first half?

When we arrived home I followed the directions closely and dropped the sand and the first half of my rock into the tank. It took a day to clear up and being a novice reefer I have to admit I was nervous over the cloudy water. I exchanged e-mail with Richard, and he was reassuring and helpful. For the first night I left my skimmer and UV sterilizer off so things could ‘seed’. When things did clear up, it was incredibly crystal clear. We could see the rock like looking through a window.

And what rock! The hardest part of aquascaping with TBS rock is it’s hard to decide which sides of the rock to face toward the front of the tank. Every side is covered with living graffiti. We have rock covered in red, orange, yellow and black sponges. We have found tunicates and feather worms galore. This is beautiful stuff folks. When we go to the LFS now, and see their Fiji premium rock we can’t help but laugh because it just looks like purple base rock. Not this stuff. Richard’s rock has so much stuff on it that we still see new stuff every time we look. We spend hours with a flashlight, looking in every nook and cranny. And when the Nighttime LED lighting is on, we see stuff come out we don’t see during the day. It’s fun to watch the corals and see hundreds of tongues licking the water, and see them zip inside when our light passes over.

We still haven’t gotten the ‘Package Part Deaux’ but we already have tons of cool critters; snails, a cucumber, a starfish with green and white stripes (my wife named it spearmint), a small dime sized black urchin, crabs of all sorts. We see two huge Red Mithrax crabs. Check your bags too, because I found tons of decorator and porcelain crabs in the water.

Everything seems to be thriving. We are doing some water changes and waiting for the cycle to complete. We can’t wait to see what the second shipment has in store. My wife already has a space designated for a 300 gallon tank in the house, and the first place I’ll turn is TBS.

Thank you Neptune, er … I mean Richard, for an awesome experience and so much peace of mind.

Joe & Cindy Tyler, TX









Sent from my Verizon Wireless 4G LTE Smartphone

[chicagoreefer20]

Nice write up! I cant imagine transporting that many boxes!

[cnreef]

I bought rock from him as well, it did have a lot of life on it. Took me about 1-2 weeks to cycle. The only thing I didn't really want in my tank that came in on the rock was a mantis shrimp as well as 2 pistol shrimp. I still have something making clicking noises which I can't find the source of, very frustrating.... I was a local pick up and he was very nice at accommodating me to come by and pick up the rock on the weekend.

[Cashda]

Great write up! I'm actually a week or so away from contact Richard about getting the 65 gal package. I live in Gainesville FL and plan on just driving down to pick it up. CAN'T WAIT!!!

[FTDelta]

I have many great stories of folks getting live rock package from TBS. You did good.

[Sugar Magnolia]

Glad to hear you have had a great experience so far. You'll have to be on the lookout for unwanted hitch hikers though. Xanthid crabs, mantis shrimp, Eunice worms. Those you'll want to trap and remove so you don't have to deal with them later.