About Jnicho

My name is Jeff, I’m 39 and I am a reef-aholic and an active member of several online reef aquarium forum style sites, including The Reef Tank Online Community. I’ve been keeping aquaria off and on for about 25 years. My very first tank was a 20-gallon “loaner” aquarium used to conduct a hermit crab behavior study when I was still in school. I lived in Stamford, CT at the time and simply went down to the local beach and came home with some sand, rock and a bunch of hermit crabs.

After the paper was written, I enjoyed keeping the critters so much that I kept the tank going for a while with various crabs, macro-algae’s, stars; pretty much whatever I could find in the tide pools at the local beach. After that aquarium, I kept a number of mostly freshwater tanks before again entering into the world of marine/reef tanks. Since then, I’ve kept tanks which have included many different approaches including a cold-water tank with local specimens (this when I lived in Washington State and had access to livestock from the Strait of Juan De Fuca).

When I moved back to the Midwest from Washington I got rid of all of my livestock and most of my equipment. I initially setup a small tank after moving but that didn’t last long and in February 2008 I came across a deal on the current 125gallon tank and stand that I just couldn’t pass up! In addition to the 125-gallon reef tank there is also a 12-gallon nano reef and a 10-gallon freshwater-planted tank in my home.