Richard Harker has been a reef hobbyist for 18 years. His first reef tank was a 90 gallon tank with primarily soft corals. The tank evolved into a stony coral tank in the early 1990s and he has primarily maintained small polyp stony corals since then. In 1995 he stepped up to a 300 gallon reef tank. Photos of the tank have been featured in numerous hobbyist magazine articles and is included in Mike Paletta’s new book, "Reef tanks of the world." In 1999, Harker built a 2000 gallon tank that features nearly 100 square feet of stony corals. The reef tank has been the subject of an article in the 2000 Marine Fish and Reef Annual and the German reef keeping magazine, Koralle.

Harker has published hobbyist oriented articles in several magazines over the past five years. His writings have appeared in Aquarium Frontiers, Aquarium Fish Magazine, Marine Fish and Reef Annual, Aquarium Fish USA, and SeaScope. In addition, he is the Product Review columnist for Advanced Aquarist. He has spoken at numerous hobbyist meetings including MACNA and the Western Marine Conference.

In addition to maintaining a large reef tank, Harker has explored natural coral reefs around the world. He has studied and photographed coral reefs on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, Fiji, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, The Philippines, Palau, Micronesia, as well as Florida and throughout the Caribbean.

Richard Harker will be giving us a tour of his 2,000 gallon aquarium. It's now 7 years old and it has gone through quite an evolution since it was first written up in 2000. He'll tie this into natural reef ecology and why it was built it the way it was. He'll also talk about what he would do differently today and explain how the lessons he learned can be applied to any size tank.