radiata
NJRC Member
Just found this on the International Marine Aquarists mailing list and had to pass it along... 
You Know You Are a Reefer If ...
by Thomas S. Heo
You know you are a reefer if...
(1) You would rather tinker with your tank than tinker with your "significant other".
(2) You are watching "Baywatch, on location in Hawaii", and you only notice the corals, and can name all the corals in the shot, and don't even realise that Pam Anderson is wearing nothing but a white bathing suit in very cold water in that same shot.
(3) You spend $9.00/lb for imported "purple" rock with living things on it that you can't even see without an electron microscope.
(4) You like buying things twice, like a protein skimmer, lighting, live rock, et cetera, with the thought that "for now, this will be good enough 'til I get more money".
(5) You have to borrow your friend's pick-up truck to go to the market so that you can fit all those 1 gallon jugs full of distilled water into one car in order to fill up your new 150 gallon tank.
(6) You are late to work because you were up all night draining your 150 gallon tank full of that water from (5) because you didn't bother to check if that bulkhead was fastened correctly, which it wasn't.
(7) You get a very sharp pain in your wallet whenever you look at your tank.
(8) Your ears hurt from your "significant other" yelling at you all the time for buying things that you can't pet, name, train, wear, eat, or even touch, for 50 bucks a pop.
(9) You spend 5 hours looking into your tank so that you can get the 5 second glimpse of that copepod scurrying under the rocks.
(10) You stay up all night wondering what that thing in (9) was, thinking it was a flea that will eat everything from (8).
(11) You know what strontium is.
(12) You know what the relationship is between alkalinity (what you used to think was just a type of battery), pH, and calcium.
(13) You have an unexplainable urge to see as many other reef tanks as you can possibly see, even if it means driving for 8 hours to get to them.
(14) You know what the ocean (and fish poop) tastes like from sucking on that hose to get the siphon going so you can do the weekly water change in your tank. *Note: this is only with the newer reefers.
(15) You put more fluids into your reef tank in a day, than you put into your car in a year.
(16) You've got a 2 foot-high stack of vinyl bags, from bringing all those corals home.
(17) You've got an entire drawer-full of tiny rubber bands that came with the bags in (16), with which you struggled for an hour to get them off after getting your brand new corals home -"these will come in handy some day", you said to yourself at the time.
(18) You make up 10 new cuss words after struggling with (17) to get them off of (16) so that you can admire (8).
(19) You know the German word for "limewater".
(20) You are reading this list.
You Know You Are a Reefer If ...
by Thomas S. Heo
You know you are a reefer if...
(1) You would rather tinker with your tank than tinker with your "significant other".
(2) You are watching "Baywatch, on location in Hawaii", and you only notice the corals, and can name all the corals in the shot, and don't even realise that Pam Anderson is wearing nothing but a white bathing suit in very cold water in that same shot.
(3) You spend $9.00/lb for imported "purple" rock with living things on it that you can't even see without an electron microscope.
(4) You like buying things twice, like a protein skimmer, lighting, live rock, et cetera, with the thought that "for now, this will be good enough 'til I get more money".
(5) You have to borrow your friend's pick-up truck to go to the market so that you can fit all those 1 gallon jugs full of distilled water into one car in order to fill up your new 150 gallon tank.
(6) You are late to work because you were up all night draining your 150 gallon tank full of that water from (5) because you didn't bother to check if that bulkhead was fastened correctly, which it wasn't.
(7) You get a very sharp pain in your wallet whenever you look at your tank.
(8) Your ears hurt from your "significant other" yelling at you all the time for buying things that you can't pet, name, train, wear, eat, or even touch, for 50 bucks a pop.
(9) You spend 5 hours looking into your tank so that you can get the 5 second glimpse of that copepod scurrying under the rocks.
(10) You stay up all night wondering what that thing in (9) was, thinking it was a flea that will eat everything from (8).
(11) You know what strontium is.
(12) You know what the relationship is between alkalinity (what you used to think was just a type of battery), pH, and calcium.
(13) You have an unexplainable urge to see as many other reef tanks as you can possibly see, even if it means driving for 8 hours to get to them.
(14) You know what the ocean (and fish poop) tastes like from sucking on that hose to get the siphon going so you can do the weekly water change in your tank. *Note: this is only with the newer reefers.
(15) You put more fluids into your reef tank in a day, than you put into your car in a year.
(16) You've got a 2 foot-high stack of vinyl bags, from bringing all those corals home.
(17) You've got an entire drawer-full of tiny rubber bands that came with the bags in (16), with which you struggled for an hour to get them off after getting your brand new corals home -"these will come in handy some day", you said to yourself at the time.
(18) You make up 10 new cuss words after struggling with (17) to get them off of (16) so that you can admire (8).
(19) You know the German word for "limewater".
(20) You are reading this list.
