Dmac2000ws
New member
Hello fellow reefers this is my first post so bear with me. I have been in the hobby for 5 years (saltwater ) 2 years (freshwater) and i have read so many post and gaining so much insight without ever leaving a thank you or even adding a comment so to all i apologize. Now a quick background I have been in the Army for 13 years and just retired in 2014 I'm 43 years old. Now i set my first saltwater tank up in 2009 and i just had some damsels and live rock and thats was good enough for me, i was using canister filters on a 55 gallon marineland tank with the eclipse system. Well like i said that was good for me till i got orders to deploy in Oct 2010 (fast forward ) to 2012 i set up a 55 gallon reef tank with a 20 gal sump and i needed all the help i could get without sounding like a newb so i browsed so many threads till i felt i was confident enough to jump in and i did it i had a beautiful tank livestock and healthy pristine water then it happened i was injured in a motorcycle accident and medically retired 2 years later. now up until then my tank was my pride and joy a real show piece then i will admit maybe some mild PTS and depression that i was no longer in uniform set in and my tank paid for it. Now here is the thing the money i invested in my system and this hobby was ridiculous and i manually dosed aqua vitro's line faithfully but i started neglecting my tank so i bought all the things that i thought i needed to do as little to my tank as possible and when i got tired of dosing i bought an auto doser but since i couldn't really figure the auto dosing rates with aqua vitro line i went to bulk reef supply for the bulk kit and i did it and that was a rap and i kid you not i didn't do a water change for id say 18 months i had coralline algae everywhere in my 75 gal and in my 40 gal both connected to a aquaeon pro flex 3, livestock was 3 true percs, 2 exotic black ice clowns, 1 blood shrimp, 1 cleaner shrimp, 1 red dragonet, and a sail fin blend who i named old man, plenty of acans, plays, zoas, some lps, and etc. as i neglected my tank my tank flourished and i didn't understand it, coralline algae really hit up my 40 gal acrylic tank covering the front and sides but on my 75 gal just the live rock, wave makers and anything plastic then all of a sudden i had the worst bristle worm bloom and they were in both tanks so bad they didn't even hide anymore so needless to say i was even less enthused to do anything about it and that caused so many arguments with my wife because she was like you put so much money into this hobby just to let your stuff go bad but like i said my live stock was healthy and growing. THIS IS THE PART WHERE I BEAR MY SOUL COMMUNITY me and my wife moved to a four bedroom house on post just two blocks over from where we originally stayed and i knew i would have to break my tank down and i dreaded it but i told my livestock i was sorry and if they just bared with me i promised not to leave them in such dire conditions again i was feeling happy again so i tore my tank down, cleaned all my equipment in the process and set my tank back up, well between 2 days none of my livestock made it but my coral did but i had to kill some of those off because they were infested with aphasia ( i forgot to include that earlier) but I'm sorry i did that i neglected my tank in which i have invested well over $8000 dollars but I'm here to say i will never let that happen again so please community comment as you will but i will now be an active participant and i welcome all comments bad or good but i have a new found vigor for this hobby and i will take what i have learned to make the best reef tank i can, oh real quick a lot of my depression started when my wife got orders to go to hawaii in 2013 and i knew i couldn't reef there so i was really upset and things spiraled from there. well i hope this wasn't too long i will post pics of what my tank used to look like and what it looks like now. well thanks for reading and i look forward to being active at reef central