Hello everyone, my name is Kevin Kramer and I have been a reefer since 12/26/07. Ever since a young age I have been obsessed by fish, in fact my first word was "ish". Almost four years ago for my 11th birthday I got a 29 gallon tank, which I made freshwater. One year later I got two turtles, the Christmas of this same year I got my first 29 gallon bio-cube. Now in the beginning my goal was to just be able to keep fish, it is hard to believe that 2.5 years ago I didn't know what live-rock was. One week after having my tank setup I bought my first saltwater fish a yellow tail damsel. About a month later I bought an occy I named him Nemo. I began to fill my tank with other various fish (royal gramma, green mandarin, and a sixline wrasse). I have always been obsessed with cleaner shrimp ever since I saw the movie "Finding Nemo". One day I was searching criagslist and I happened upon a cleaner shrimp for $5, being short on cash I went to the guys house and got the cleaner shrimp(There was a guy moving to Flordia and he was getting rid of everything). Although when there is something that cheap there is going to be other stuff too. While I was there I decided to buy his kole tang, his mated pair of gold-stripe maroon clownfish, and his bubble-tip anemone. My 29 gallon biocube didn't have the lighting to keep the anemone alive so I moved the freshwater fish into a 10 gallon, threw the tang into the biocube, and setup a 29 gallon tank for the clowns and anemone. One week later on 12/26/10 I picked up the anemone and clowns and brought them home to their temporary home. Needless to say I was still a newbie at this time so the tang got ich and killed every fish in my biocube except for the sixline wrasse. I was so depressed that I was about to quit the hobby but I looked at the clowns and knew that if I was going to say in this hobby than I would have to learn everything that I could. Several months went by and I convinced my dad that I needed a larger tank so we bought a 135 gallon tank on eBay. We got it setup and in May of 2009 I moved the clowns and the anemone into the tank. I slowly began to buy new fish and corals and my tank was coming along nicely. Then in June of 2009 my clowns laid eggs, I knew that this would happen but I had heard that there would be no way that the eggs would be fertile. Then in September my clowns laid eggs in a terracotta pot and I decided that I would try to raise the larvae. I came in contact with Tal Sweet (fishtal) in July I knew that he lived in Waterford but I didn't want to be a pest, finally in September I met Tal. It turned out that he lives two minutes away from me (and that's the walk), I was able to raise my larvae to 3 days which is really bad. Finally on my second try I got one clown to make it through metamorphosis. My third I got 20 to live. My fourth I got 13 to live. Then the clowns stopped laying. I am happy to say that I have sever seven month old juveniles who are starting to get their gold stripes. Now the clowns restarted laying last month and I currently have 300+ larvae that are four days old.
This year I will be attending the MMC and I'm going to try to attend MACNA. I hope that everyone knows a bit more about me now.