Getting your significant other involved in the hobby

Up till now, my wife has shown no real interest in the tank. It's something she tolerates because it keeps me out of trouble in the winter.

This weekend, she went to a frag swap with me. She didn't stay long, but she did show some interest and even gave her input on a coral or two (which mostly consisted of "Whatever you want" ).

So, I decided to push my luck tonight and ask her opinion on placing the corals. The plan was to tell her the various spots in the tank each coral could work and see what she thought.

It started with her looking at this mushroom and saying, "So, is that thing always going to look like a big piece of moss?"

It's a start...

 

I am guess I am lucky; my wife is fully supportive of my habit We both had freshwater tanks since we started dating, so she was all for the switch to SW. We do monthly family trips to the LFS, getting the little reefer involved at a very early age

 

You are lucky and a family outing would be awesome! One of my daughters has a goldfish tank. She was good with it for a few years (won them at the county fair), but has lost interest now that she's hitting the teen years. My guess is I've planted the seed for the aquarium hobby with her for later on though.

In my wife's defense, she did stick it out tonight and actually came up with a decent idea for a candy cane placement. I'll keep trying...

 

My wife is pretty knowledgeable because I talk at her all the time. I don't know if she is super into it but she has some ideas for tanks and is excited about fish and stuff.

 

Hahaha! The only time my wife gets involved is when my tank or myself makes messes all over the floor, recently she got so involved I was ready to give up on this hobby.
She did though pick the clown fish. She is so involved with my hobby I can order 4 new corals and she will never notice them in the tank, hahaha! One way of getting away with ordering new Corals. She once asked me and pointed at a Coral and said is that new? No! Actually it was part of the very first bunch of Corals added to the tank. That's enough involvement for me brothers.

 

Mine will text me pics whenever anything weird/funny is going on in the tank, such as my Blue Tuxedo Urchin stealing corals, noticing new coral heads/babies, plate coral eating my shrimp, etc...

 

My wife has been very patient so far. Has never really questioned the various (sometimes weekly) Marine Depot, BRS, DFS, and AquaSD boxes that appear on the front door step. She even held it together back when this was a FW tank and I made the fatal error of starting to refill the tank with a python from the tap and then walking away. Remembered it about 2 hours later. Not pretty on a carpeted floor.

Just need to get her into it more and get buy in for the next build...

 

When I order new Corals I have it sent priority, take off from work, meet the FedEx guy, add Corals and go back to work, when my wife gets home from her work all clues, boxes have disappeared. lol.

 

Hahah +1 to this only part of working second shift I like!! But my wife got me into saltwater cause I wanted a fresh tank and she said no I always wanted a saltwater tank!! She Helps do testing and dosing and even feeding corals and water changes.

 

My wife loves this hobby! It started out as a 10 tank to see if I could keep sw fish, then it became a nano reef. Now we have 75 and she loves going to pet stores to pick out fish n corals!