Lunatuck
Established Member
Ahhh man would have loved to see that. That was about the time I gave up reefkeeping as well(27 now, did it from like 14 with my dads help, to about 19-20). Mine was nice, but nothing world class. A lot of it was trial and error. My goal was to keep cuttlefish, but ended up selling my stuff before i could.
I loved it, but got sick of carrying water all over the place. I started reefkeeping when I was about 10 (40 now). My father did freshwater, but we always admired the reefs. We dabbled, but didn't have a whole lot of luck. At some point, I got onto reef central, setup a refugium and my reefkeeping luck took off. It wasn't so much buying this or that, it was learning the routine and sticking to the schedule.
I also look at reefkeeping and bioactive terraria as being similar. My favorite part of all my reef tanks was the refugium. Lots of bugs!