Jestersix

Why

Well for me it's because there's nothing but SPS at raffles, fragworkshops and they make up a majority of swap corals! :) Actually I'm not really "going" SPS, but I keep a few because I think it'll keep me honest with keeping the water quality good in my tank... unfortunately until that can happen they sit in a prop tank that's bare-everything.
 
Never really did myself, got as far as chalices and was hooked for life. BTW, there's some corals here (Tonga) that I've never seen before and are absolutely amazing. This week Teau (one of our best coral divers) brought up (from 60 feet)3 ultra royal purple scleroneptheas that neither Eddie nor I had ever seen before. Truly outstanding.
I'm going to see if a few of the divers want to sit around the computer here and answer questions direct from hobbyists at a predetermined time. Of course it'll be on this forum only. If you ever wanted to know more about exactly where your corals are coming from, the conditions they're found under in the wild or just generally about life in Tonga, start saving up your questions.-Jim
 
Wow, and double wow, Jim :)

As for me, I started out with zoos and LPS. At the beginning of the year, I did my first trade, a head of branching hammer for some lavender candycane. I brought some extra zoos, and the person gave me some zoos and a piece of purple edge tan cap.

The cap did well in my tank at that time... 220 watts of fluorescent over a 37. So then I started paying more attention to montis. At the TP closing sale, I picked up an orange cap, and a purple green encrusting monti. They did well also.

Some time after that, I decided I needed a bigger tank, and I upgraded to a 72 bow and picked up some used MH off of Craigslist.

Got a piece of Leng Sy, some orange digi, tan digi, and purple tan cap at my first BAR swap in July. Those grew quickly, so I figured I would stick with montis, LPS, and zoos.

Some time after that, someone gave me a freebie pink mille which I thought I would have problems with, but it did fine. So I figured, I could do milles but that I should stay away from other acros.

A few meetings back, I ended up with some of the Tonga acro frags which have been happy in my tank, so lately I've been looking at other acros.

Guess I'll blame BAR and my fellow reefers for getting me hooked on SPS :)
 
I started out with a FOWLR system because I wanted to enjoy saltwater fish. I didn't think I'd get into reefs because of the amount of time and equipment involved. Then after a year or so, I thought I'd try just a few corals, which were softies/leathers. That got me hooked and I started collecting more softies/leathers/LPS through trades. Then, as sfsuphysics mentions, there were so much SPS at frag swaps and workshops, that I thought I'd try a few as well. Now I like having SPS because of the colors and the challenge of keeping them alive and hopefully thriving.
 
For me, its almost like a natural evolution to the next challenge. Started off with goldfish, then went to community FW fish, then to chichlids, then to planted tanks. From there I got into FO about 6 years ago, then FOWLR, then a reef with lots of brown softies and low lighting, then to higher lighting with colorful softies and lps. So the last thing I am at now is SPS, which is the most difficult yet to get optimal growth and coloring. Theres always something to improve upon and always new technology that focuses on SPS.
 
I never thought I would get into sps. After starting up my 125 softie and LPS reef tank 2 1/2 years ago, I was never interested with sps. I didn't think I could keep them alive. Then I upgraded to my 200 with DE MH, barebottom with fairly high flow. A lot of the corals I had needed to move down and away from my high flow area so I had plenty of space on the top part of my tank. Try a couple of sps frags from the last workshop. They seem to be coloring up and doing OK. Also, I could see growth on the ones I got at the workshop. Then I bought more frags from Steve at New Alameda Aquatics. Bought 4 more yesterday from Steve. Guess I'm starting to like sps but if you ask me what they were, I wouldn't be able to tell you. We'll see how I do in the next couple of month for the frag meet. Thinking of getting the rest of the equipment I need to start my calcium reactor.
 
When I started I planed for fish only. Then I went to Tropical Paradise and got my first look at sps corals. I remember asking if thes pretty blue corals needed alot of light. And I was told how hard they were t keep. I like a good chalange. To long story short 2 years later I have a tank full to the brim with healthy sps and a few fish nothing else. And I personaly dont like lps.
 
I am one of the reefers that is true to his softie corals. Never changing for one reason or another. The main reason is i'm an extremely broke student teacher, I can't afford the lighting, and i'm too lazy/busy to maintain high quality water levels.
 
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