About Me

Hi, my name is Keith Jackson, and I live in Rainham, Essex - a suburb to the east of London on the north bank of the river Thames in England, and about  as far away from Hawaii as you can get (well 11,650km/7,239 miles anyway).  I work for a Government department located in Westminster, central London, in a policy area that can be intensely busy, demanding and stressful at times.  My aquariums, whilst offering their own challenges, are the antidote to that - providing me with hours of pleasure, relaxation and beauty. 

I first started keeping a marine aquarium in the 1980s, keeping a mix of fish, soft corals and invertebrates.  However, it was only when we moved home in 2000 and I setup a new marine aquarium with both soft and stony corals that I really began to get the stony coral bug...  In 2004 I switched over to a predominantly SPS stony coral set-up which was a test-run for the methodology and aquascaping to be used in the much larger biotope aquarium now featured on this site. 

Fortunately my wife (Kate) and children (Siân and David) have been very tolerant of the occasional floods, blown fuses, jumping fish, noises, smells and the storing of various suspect items in fridge and freezer, that all seem to be an integral part of this hobby. 

In order to defray some of the costs of this obsession, I now own an aquatics business - TheReef® aquatics, which specialises in sourcing and supplying affordable additives, foods, media, supplements and propagation equipment, as well as supplying UK aquacultured soft and stony corals for retail and trade. 

When I am not looking at aquariums, or working on them, I will probably be reading up on the subject.  I have built up quite a large library over the years and also spend what little spare time I have on related web forums.  Other interests are music (I have extremely broad tastes), films (nothing intellectual), and reading the harder kinds of sci-fi counter-poised by some of the more humorous fantasy.

If you want to get in touch then you can use this feedback email link.  Otherwise you can pm me at the UltimateReef, ReefCove or ReefCentral forums - my username on these is 'Jacksok' and my avatar is the palm tree...

Happy reefing!