Hello fellow Reef Keepers and welcome to Hawkfish.org.
This website started in 1998 as a way to share the progress of my reef tank with other reef keepers. It began as “Doug’s Reef and Fish page” and sometime near early 2000, I purchased the hawkfish.org domain name. The reason for the “hawkfish.org” domain name is because the flame hawkfish was one of the first saltwater fish that I saw, back at a local fish store in late 1997. After seeing that fish, which is still my favorite, along with many other colorful fish, I purchased a 29 gallon glass aquarium. That aquarium along with a bunch of other useless parts, including a hang on the back filter, an under-gravel filter and $600 out of my wallet, I had my first saltwater aquarium up and running.
I was introduced into the aquarium hobby by my dad back in 1970 when he gave me a 10 gallon freshwater aquarium with a gold fish. This soon turned into tank full of neons and other easy to keep freshwater fish. I kept that same tank for 20 years even though many of the fish didn’t last more than a year. Either way, I was hooked and the progression to saltwater was going to happen no matter how hard I tried to resist it. I also told myself I would never keep corals but that plan lasted about three months after I started my first saltwater tank.
My saltwater learning experience has spanned many years and almost as many tanks. The start of this hobby (obsession) was the 29 gallon, then three months later came the 75 gallon, then a little less than two years after that came the 90 gallon, then another 29 gallon, a 5 gallon, a 20 gallon tall, a 20 gallon long, a 12 gallon cube and somewhere in there was a 2.5 gallon. I also kept a 55 gallon freshwater tank which was later turned into a saltwater tank. At one point I had four saltwater and two freshwater aquariums in my house.
Currently, as of December of 2014, I have the 90 gallon reef tank and a 75 gallon as my, um, not so frag tank. The 90 gallon has changed a great deal over the last 13 years. It started as mostly softies, then some LPS, then almost totally SPS, back to softies again and now it is becoming a mixed reef again, which is the way that my 75 gallon started out. The 75 gallon has also gone through many changes but over the last six years or so, it has been home to a huma huma trigger and a lot of algae.
I spent a lot of time reading and learning from the internet over the years and I spent eight years as an administrator on a large reef keeping message board. I have a few published articles, that are really dated now, but they still offer a good starting point for soon to be reef keepers. My username on most of the message boards is Doug or DougW but I also used hawkfish on a few others when my name was already taken.
During the middle of 2007, I resigned from the large message board and even though I still kept my aquariums, my interest started to fade. I kept the tanks running but I didn’t put much effort into them. Luckily, the fish and corals that I had then are still with me now. I have two clown fish that I purchased in March of 1998, a purple tang from sometime around 2003 or 2004, a powder blue tang from 2004 and a flame hawkfish from 2008 (which I have had three of since I started in the hobby). I also have a finger leather soft coral that was the second coral that I purchased for my first reef tank.
Needless to say, it has been an interesting experience and I am hopeful that I can share what I have learned with all of you.
Thanks for reading my story.
Doug
