Hello all,
My name is Eddie and as the title of this thread suggests, I am new to the forums so I thought I'd introduce myself. I've been into fish tanks for about twelve or thirteen years and have been doing S/W aquariums for about ten of those years. Most people want a marine aquarium because of the colorful fish but not I. I just wanted to keep octopuses! Doing some research I discovered they're not the easiest critter to keep so I started slow, keeping damsels and a few other inverts until I had more experience. Eventually I got my octopus and by then I was hooked (no fishing pun intended). Since then I've kept just about everything that can go into a marine aquarium:
-Many species of octopuses
-Seahorses
-Cassiopea jellyfish
-Tridacna clams
-Sharks
-Cuttlefish
-Corals (of course)
-Oh yeah and fish too
My interests seem to lie with natural methods of reefkeeping and also with creating biotope style aquariums. I have within the last few years bought my first home and since it's a small one, I'm down to only one little reef tank and a sixty gallon F/W discus tank. To compensate I'm slowly tricking this little fifteen gallon tank out like no other. Right now it has a Eheim 2213 canister filtering it (no protein skimmer) and a hang on refugium with a little Chaetomorpha and two mangroves. Lots of circulation with two Maxijet (1200 and 900) on a wavemaker timer. I supplement with Seachem products , just Ca and Carbonate buffer. The tank itself is stocked with four soft corals, two Sarcophytons and two Sinularia along with a couple of feather dusters that are doing awesome (I've had them for about a year now, a record for me. I think because of no protein skimming and I target feed).
I should mention that besides being an amateur hobbyist I've also worked in the industry, working and weekend managing a LFS as well as doing professional servicing of aquariums for businesses and homes. I've got lots of stories!
Other hobbies include playing guitar (blues) and another huge hobby of mine is close-up magic. Mainly card tricks. Well that about wraps it up for me. I've been listening to the podcast for about amonth now and have almost caught up with past episodes. I'm hooked.
Whew!
ahhh, another canister man from way back, some would say we're old fossles you an I.but old school can be made to work if you apply it correctly.
how do you deal with the shorter life spans on some of the animals youv'e kept?
So far the only difference I've noticed is that filster feeders are doing much better than a my tanks I have had with skimmers. Not sure if you guys are familiar with Steve Tyree and his natural method of doing reef tanks. He uses something called "cryptic sponges" to filter reef tanks. I"m viewing the canister filter as a sort of cryptic zone. It's dark, it has slower water movement through it and it there's no bio media. Just sponges and I'll soon be using activated carbon. That's it.
I'm only keeping soft corals so I'm not hovering over nitrate test kits mind you. I do weekly water changes of almost 25%.
for what they are i dont consider canisters to be slow flow contained within a small space. but i see where your coming from.
did you introduce sponge to your baskets, how the growth rates based on current tank stocks?
and id suggest if your adding carbon, make sure its away from the sponges
i have to honest, i dont think ive heard of people using a external filter housing for growth & filtration of this kind, ive only seen dark platforms constructed with the sumps for the cyriptic webs.
to Talkingreef.. 
icon under there name and give them Reputation points
some would say we're old fossles you an I.
but old school can be made to work if you apply it correctly.
V-series Productions 
ryan 
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