Some Pondering
It's strange really, I was thinking about the tank and the hobby and now you're all going to have to put up with me thought ramblings.
I've been in this hobby for 4/5 years now and I've yet to have my tank at a stage of what I would consider it to be a successful reef for any period of time. There was a period there with cade that was doing really well and I was over the moon with it and truly proud of the tank I had, that was pretty quickly destroyed by pest algae. Since then it's really just been bump to bump to bump and I really haven't felt a great deal of pride or feeling of accomplishment since then.
It's only really now that I feel that I'm starting to get somewhere with the tank. I've eliminated AEFW, bubble algae, bryopsis and caulerpa nummularia, all the pests that plagued me. It's meant I've lost a lot of stock and I'm now a master of the things that go wrong lol
Now that the tank is free, I feel it has a little more direction and motivation to it. I also feel that I might actually have a tank that is level with my knowledge as I've always felt I can't really stand on my advice sometimes. I know I know what I'm doing and that I can do it, I just feel that I haven't been there in a long time. I just want things to be nice, happy, colourful and growing lol. I want fat happy fish too lol
That all being said and done I've done some thinking and I need to get my ass into gear! I've finally got this calcium reactor sorted and pumping away (well not really but I don't have much demand in the tank yet lol), the nutrients are floating around the 10 and 0.03 area but I might bring those down a little more with AF. I desperately want to add some more fish as the tank feels so empty but I don't want to add things that aren't on my list!! I hate this dilemma lol. I might add some mozzie fish or something for some movement and not a lot of bio-load.
I'm also going to try to be a little more proactive for the next couple of months till things are rocking in a stride of some degree of stability with bi-weekly alk testing, weekly Ca and Mg testing and fortnightly nutrients (if I can be bothered lol). Then I might look into some trace dosing and maybe even an ICP test. The other front that's going to change is feeding the tank. At the moment I'm feeding live brine for a few days every second week and the fish love it! (unsurprisingly) but I've pieced together a brine hatching setup with some soda water bottles lol and I'm going to be trying out some baby brine feedings once there's a couple more fish in the tank in an attempt to start up a different experiment that might come to fruition soon :)
Anyway enough rambles, here's some pics lol
I've been in this hobby for 4/5 years now and I've yet to have my tank at a stage of what I would consider it to be a successful reef for any period of time. There was a period there with cade that was doing really well and I was over the moon with it and truly proud of the tank I had, that was pretty quickly destroyed by pest algae. Since then it's really just been bump to bump to bump and I really haven't felt a great deal of pride or feeling of accomplishment since then.
It's only really now that I feel that I'm starting to get somewhere with the tank. I've eliminated AEFW, bubble algae, bryopsis and caulerpa nummularia, all the pests that plagued me. It's meant I've lost a lot of stock and I'm now a master of the things that go wrong lol
Now that the tank is free, I feel it has a little more direction and motivation to it. I also feel that I might actually have a tank that is level with my knowledge as I've always felt I can't really stand on my advice sometimes. I know I know what I'm doing and that I can do it, I just feel that I haven't been there in a long time. I just want things to be nice, happy, colourful and growing lol. I want fat happy fish too lol
That all being said and done I've done some thinking and I need to get my ass into gear! I've finally got this calcium reactor sorted and pumping away (well not really but I don't have much demand in the tank yet lol), the nutrients are floating around the 10 and 0.03 area but I might bring those down a little more with AF. I desperately want to add some more fish as the tank feels so empty but I don't want to add things that aren't on my list!! I hate this dilemma lol. I might add some mozzie fish or something for some movement and not a lot of bio-load.
I'm also going to try to be a little more proactive for the next couple of months till things are rocking in a stride of some degree of stability with bi-weekly alk testing, weekly Ca and Mg testing and fortnightly nutrients (if I can be bothered lol). Then I might look into some trace dosing and maybe even an ICP test. The other front that's going to change is feeding the tank. At the moment I'm feeding live brine for a few days every second week and the fish love it! (unsurprisingly) but I've pieced together a brine hatching setup with some soda water bottles lol and I'm going to be trying out some baby brine feedings once there's a couple more fish in the tank in an attempt to start up a different experiment that might come to fruition soon :)
Anyway enough rambles, here's some pics lol
