Hi,
My name is Joe and I am a reef-a-holic.
I actually 'signed-up' last month - prompted by Rob's disaster and my desire to express condolences. However, I've listened to/watched all the episodes prior to that.
My reefing/saltwater experience started with my move from NYC to Elkhart, IN - where I went from freshwater to saltwater 3.5 years ago. I made a ton of newbie mistakes in the first year with the 29g bowfront I had setup as a fish only tank. Some of the nube mistakes include - puchasing a Skilter, not acclimating fish or prepping water ahead of time, temperature and
pH swings, impatience with cycling and buying 4 fish at one time for a 29g, not topping off daily, etc..
A year went by and the last fish in the 29g died right before our move to a house we bought. This was the perfect time to set things up right. I had been reading a lot of books and finally found the online forum world - reefcentral in particular and learned a few things - mostly what not to do and what to do. I setup the tank I have now and took things a lot slower.
Current tank is a 75g mixed reef, 18gallon
sump and 10g
fuge under 6x54
T5s Tek fixture. I am setting up a 20g reef ready tank for SPS only under
MH - mostly DIYing the stand, hood, etc.
I still visit forums daily like Reefcentral, MichiganReefers, ReefFrontiers, and Nano-Reef - absorbing information on a variety of topics. Lately, I've given my $0.02 on my experience and knowledge to a lot of new reefers on forums and want to do the same here.
Rob, has shown a lot of commitment to this hobby and the world's Reefs in general by puttcontinuing on with his podcasts and this having this site - especially after his situation last month where a lot of people would have packed up. So, I'm tossing my hat in the ring and will contribute as much information as I can.
To pay for my addiction, I am a licensed prefessional engineer (strucutral) by day. I've stated my opinion about integrity of framing when others have posted concerns. Usually, the opinion is well received but there are times contractors chime in and dispute what I stated citing many years of experience. So I may not necessarily answer all structural related threads because my opinion - based on material and building code- sometimes conflicts with what other people think it should be
.
I also believe that you should take someone's opinion/reply in threads as that - an opinion. It may not be the right/best answer - or even correct for that matter.
Well, I've rambled enough. Time to start surfing
through some of the threads.
to TR. You will find a lot of reef-a-holics here! 
icon under their name to add to their reputation. 
USA 
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