Many years ago (2006 I believe) I installed this 250 gallon aquarium in a now defunct juice bar in Houston, Texas. The gentleman who owned the establishment was the husband of one of my clients, a dentist. This dentist was one of my very first clients when I started my business in 2002, while working as a zookeeper at the Houston Zoo. Check out this picture below of the wife’s (the dentist) reef system back in 2005.
Yes, I know it looks kind of strange but the cabinetry was covered in mirror. It wasn’t my design but instead a system I had taken over. It was mostly filled with mushroom corals so it was pretty easy to care for but provided a pretty good visual impact in her office. Unfortunately the whole system was lost during Hurricane Ike in 2008. Complete loss.
So back to the main aquarium featured in this post, the 250 gallon freshwater aquarium with a three dimensional internal background made by Back to Nature, a Swedish company. Click HERE to check them out. Apparently they will be selling to the US market in the Spring of 2019. The aquarium itself was made by Dutch Aquarium Systems out of Waxahachie, Texas, a company I have done business with since the mid 1990s when I first started in this industry.
As I said earlier, Demetra J was started by the husband of the dentist and was a juice bar offering juices from all over South America as well as healthy snacks. The venture did not last all that long and they had to shut down, as well as that aquarium as well. It makes me sad when I think about it because it was a great concept and a fun place.
I had the tank lit with two PFO 250 watt double ended metal halides, which looking back on this was likely too much light for this system honestly. It would have been nice to use LEDs but they were not available back then. I did have live plants in there but was not administering CO2 to the system, as I should have been to get vigorous plant growth. I had a great mix of South American tetras, corydoras catfish, angelfish, etc. The filtration was an Eheim 2262 canister filter, which worked very well for this system.
It is too bad this place didn’t stick around because I had fun with this tank. The pictures do not do the internal background justice. That tree trunk was so realistic looking, I would have people ask me how I got it into there while I was cleaning it. When I look at these pictures now and I reminisce about this system, I know I could have done things differently and better than I did back then but I also realize that this is one of the systems that got me to where I am now. Back in 2006, this was a big deal for me. Many of the larger systems I did back then were systems I didn’t install but took over the maintenance of. I look back at systems like this and am grateful for it and all the others on my path. I view what I do for a living as living art and myself as an artist. I leave it for the viewer to decide what they think about my work, as it should be, though I take great pride in my past and how seriously I took (and still do take) this journey.
Thank you for reading and I hope you found this memory interesting.
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