Paula K. - Entry #16
My son, Thomas who is 19, and I started this hobby really hit and heavy almost 2 years ago. We had a nano saltwater tank for about 3 1/2 years prior to getting a 55 gallon 2 years ago. When my son was a senior in high school he enlisted in the military (he did 4 years of JROTC) because he knew he wanted to serve his country like his dad had done before being medically discharged due to an injury while in Afghanistan. Just a few weeks after graduating he left for basic training and then went straight to AIT (Advanced individual training for his mos/job). While he was away at training, the saltwater tank that we started 2 years ago together (just before he graduated) was a hobby that the two of us could do together while he was away. I wrote him weekly while in training and at AIT and sent him pictures and updates on the tank each week. Any time I would make a purchase, whether fish or coral, I would ask him what he wanted and we slowly built up our tank. He is now deployed a lot as he even volunteers to go and while he is deployed our tank has grown and is still an ongoing discussion for us while he his gone. Well, he is deployed helping with all this covid stuff and will not be back until September at this point. Last week, Texas was hit with a really bad snow storm. We lost power for 3 1/2 days, had no water for almost a week, were out of propane (called for delivery prior to storm but they didn’t get to it) that we heat, cook, and provide hot water with, and ran out of firewood within 2 days. Even with the fireplace our house would only get to 43 degrees. Needless to say, we lost everything! Lighting will no longer program, heater fried, lost all fish, invertebrates, and coral. Had 3 snowflake clowns, chocolate mimic tank, hippo tang, coral beauty, yellow angel, pensudo, flame hawk, banded gobie, 4 cardinals, 2 emerald crabs, 1 arrow crab, numerous turbo, bumblebee, and regular snails, starfish, Kenya tree, rainbow bubble tip anemone, long tentacle anemone, regular bubble anemone, and about 25-30 different scans, zoas, mushrooms, blastos, etc. I hated to tell my son what had happened to our tank but I had to. He is devastated! I promised that I would do everything possible to get our tank back up and running! Any help in making this a reality would be great! The first picture is about 3 months ago, prior to storm when tank was nice and last 4 are of the destroyed tank after the storm.
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