Have you thought of quitting this hobby?

[joe pooh]

i feel i lose interest sometimes, especially when things are not going well in the tank or at home. i just dumb it down to the bare necessities, water changes and cleaning the equipment. i snap out of it after a while and am happy i still have my tank up. i had stopped for years and regretted it due to the cost of starting up again. the only reason i started up again was i was given a tank ready to go. Even that brought it's own problems, but i toughed it out. now my tank looks good and even my Blue Hippo Tang stopped giving me grief.

**keep your rocks alive until you are sure you want to shut down. once they die, it is time consuming and frustrating work to clean the death off them so you can reuse them.**

[WarDog]

I'll be quitting any day now.

[Dearth]

Originally Posted by WarDog

I'll be quitting any day now.

And how many years have you been telling yourself that particular story eh!!

[jhj0112]

Originally Posted by Cujo#31

In my very limited experience (6 years give or take) I have finally come to therms with a couple facts. The first being that we all fool ourselves by saying this is a hobby. In reality it is no more than a bad investment.....and a burning passion. The second thing I have learned is loss seems to sadly be a rite of passage.
We start out, and things are going well. Then we get complacent,cocky or we "over tinker" trying to tease that extra shot of color, or there are dosing pump failures, power failures, disease, bugs.Whatever the caause, things suddenly go to hell. The Coral Gods have stepped in to remind you who is really in control.
I have failed far more often than I have succeeded. But instead of throwing in the towel the first time I contemplated such a thing as I stared at my now shredded, fishless display, and coral strewn about it as though I had let my kids swim in the tank from removing fish for Ich treatment, man I was crushed.
Then I realized that I did enjoy the "hobby", that I enjoyed the challenge, and as so many have said, the time and money invested to that point hardly justified walking away. I then started re-assessing everything and started looking at my issues as an opportunity to do things to the tank I wasn't able to do before. Change mobile inhabitants, rearrange the rock the way I wanted, change my sump design, and.....hell.....why not just go to a bigger tank??? LMMFAO
Failure is only a negative if we have not learned from it. The single greatest resource, is other reefers, and their painful accounts of "life gone wrong". Take their experiences and learn from them. Learn from your mistakes. Find the common threads to failure, crashes etc and avoid them. For me, it is the complete abandonment of dosing pumps, as they seem to be the single largest contributors to crashes. Quarantine, Quarantine, and then Quarantine some more.
Most important is to always remember that none of us is immune to disaster, none of us are infallible, and we all walk that razor's edge while we try to "play master creator" in our own little oceans.That is what keeps me going, the delicate balance, the sheer fleeting pleasure of a good result, the pain of failure....it all goes hand in hand. That is reefing. We are all "that special kind of crazy". That is why we reef. Chin up. Good Luck

Thanks! Yeah I have to admit I was cocky..

corals are still dying now and I feel like I have to wait till things calm down in the tank.

I have had minor set-backs before but never to this.. All SPS are gone now.. frogspawn and hammers are shrinking..

At this moment, I don't even have any desire to check the water.. I think chasing numbers causes death of fishes..

At least, all of RFAs are OK for now.

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[Cujo#31]

Originally Posted by jhj0112

Thanks! Yeah I have to admit I was cocky..

corals are still dying now and I feel like I have to wait till things calm down in the tank.

I think chasing numbers causes death of fishes..



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Well said. I learned the hard way myself on a few occasions chasing numbers. I have had much more success maintaining a range. And tinkering with addatives to try teasing out just a little more color.

[whatcaneyedo]

Hell yeah! Quite the hobby, sell the house, leave the wife, buy a sailboat and go hang out with the fishes in THEIR natural environment. Thats my plan B.

[spit.fire]

Originally Posted by whatcaneyedo

Hell yeah! Quite the hobby, sell the house, leave the wife, buy a sailboat and go hang out with the fishes in THEIR natural environment. Thats my plan B.

Pretty much what I’ll do if I ever win the lottery lol, minus the leave the wife part because she already left me

[Ram3500]

Originally Posted by spit.fire

Pretty much what I’ll do if I ever win the lottery lol, minus the leave the wife part because she already left me

This post need a like button or a up vote option.Just cuz I have been there.

[IronChefItaly]

I don't think there is anyone in this hobby who hasn't seriously considered shutting down their tank at one point or another. I've gone through periods of disease, neglect or other common reef issues that have made me turn my head from my system for days other than to feed. All said and done though, there are few things better than having your own kick-ass tank operating at its new best after a hard bit of effort - progress. Take your time, brainstorm some improvements, then put it all to work!

[takeastabatit22]

Well it was nice to meet you and to see you restarting

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