David Wendland's Hobbies:

Marine Aquariums

Pictures are soon to come (been saying that for a while!!):

I have been a Marine Aquarium enthusiast for over 10 years. When I first got into it the Wet/Dry (a.k.a.Trickle filter) was just starting to catch on with the hobbyists. They were quite expensive so I decided I would build one myself. I glued together a 12"x12"x15" box using Acrylic pieces. At the bottom of the box I drilled a lot of holes for the water to exit. I then built a shelf within the box about 1.5" above the holes. This level is filled with Bio-Balls which support the nitrifying bacteria that break down the waste in the water. About 3" from the top I built another shelf. This level holds the mechanical filter portion of the Wet/Dry. There is a spinner arm assembly that is connected to the lid of the box. The water is sprayed over the filter media by the spinner arm. After the mechanical filtration, It trickles through the Bio-Ball level where the waste is broken down to less harmful chemicals. It then flows out the holes at the base of the box into a Sump. The sump for my home made filter is an old 30 gal fish tank. With this setup alone I had maintained a well stocked Marine aquarium for many years in my Oceanic 58 gal tank. I only performed 1/4 tank water changes about every 6 months. Since then I have added a 25w UV sterilizer, a Protein Skimmer and an Ozonizer in order to make the tank even more maintenance free. Besides the water changes every 6 months the only other thing that I have to do is scrape the algae and clean the filters once in a while. My tank currently has a Porcupine Puffer, a Koni Tang, a Dwarf Angel, a small long purple fish whose name escapes me and my little buddy the Hermit Crab. I am planning on buying some Live Rock if I can find any that has a decent amount of growth on it as well as another fish or two this spring. I had two large Loin Fish, a Niger Trigger, a Porcupine puffer, a large Wrasse, a Mandarin Goby, a different Tang, and a large Coral Beauty all living happily in this same tank setup for two years until one summer the AC went out when I was at work and the water temp got really high. Even though I was able to eventually able to stabilize the water temp the stress levels were too much and the fish slowly died off a few days later.

Scuba Diving

Info and pictures will be added soon about this topic. One thing I do want to say about this topic is that I went diving in Cozumel a few years ago and I must say it was great. The best place so far. I have dove in lakes, the Florida Keys and off the cost of a Venezuelan Island, Margarita Island, and none so far has topped Cozumel. I had a great local dive master there though that showed me the best places. His name was Victor Brito. I don't know if he is still around there, but his time was worth the very reasonable price that he ws asking.

I am going to Brazil in Feb 2002 so hopefully I will have some picture of scuba diving from there!!

Snowmobiling

More recently my wife and I have started to snowmobile.  Click here to go to our snowmobiling page!!

My 1994 Firebird Formula (now dead)

I owned a black '94 Firebird Formula that I have done a lot of work on. Click here for the page.  I sold it and a month later it was totalled.  Figures!!!