My 20 long nano bare bottom

Stupid scab I have is dying back a bit. It may be due to that tiny amount of kalk I used. I changed 5 gallons on Wednesday and things looked better on Thursday but today the tank looks a bit sad. Getting some film algae after harvesting some chaeto as well.

Thinking I may need more white light on the corals for better growth. Only running the leds at 15% of power for the last few months. I'll bring it up more today.

Just raised the fixtures brightness to 20% peak today. I'll see how things react.
 
I might be done... I'm really finding it tough to be enthusiastic about all this work. I love it. I just wish I could trade it for some other hobby that I can ignore and nothing bad happens.

I love these fish and these corals but I'm not doing so well with it. I keep messing up the alk and calcium and nothing likes my methods.
 
Bagabaga said:
I might be done... I'm really finding it tough to be enthusiastic about all this work. I love it. I just wish I could trade it for some other hobby that I can ignore and nothing bad happens.

I love these fish and these corals but I'm not doing so well with it. I keep messing up the alk and calcium and nothing likes my methods.
Click to expand...

:headwalls: It never gets easy.
 
Corals are still doing great. I'm going to do a water change this week and trim back my chaeto. This time just a little. I think I had a nitrate spike when I trimmed 70 % of it last time. Bubble algae stopped growing film algae is really slow growing and I haven't had a spike or crash in a couple weeks. Trumpet coral is growing flesh around old skeleton. All lps are open and happy. Acan lost a bit of tissue but it's my first one and I don't know what it likes yet. Clowns are alive and happy, purple pseudo is happy still in the sump rocks.

I really want to get a ton of lps pieces and fill all open spaces so I have a wobbly mess of tentacles. I love it.

I think the worm died in the walking dendro, it hasn't moved in weeks. Coral is open and fine though.

I'm tempted to dose again but I won't. I'll keep doing water changes with my Kent reef salt until everything loves me again.
 
Randy's two part was what I use to dose 2 part and I tried kalk a couple times. I'm never using kalk again. It's too elusive for me to use. 2 part never seems to overdose. I wish I had a dosing pump for my two part it works the best.

I added 2 liters or so of matrix a couple months ago and my sump rocks started to grow algae from the bare bottom being transparent to the sump. I removed the air pump from the sump and the skimmer is doing great work. I need to turkey baste my rocks and sump and filter out the detritus this weekend.

I wish my flame angel survived to see the tank. I'd love to see him swimming about picking at algae.

The clowns are fantastic but they hang in one corner all day and make me feel bad that I trapped them in a small tank.
 
Getting nice second hand pieces of coral is ridiculous in my area. I emailed someone about a common color variant hammer with 3 heads asking how much and they want 75 for it. I paid 50 for a two head neon green and purple frogspawn. Frags are expensive as well. I just can't seem to keep easy sps at all. Birdsnest and pocillopora die too easily in my tank.
 
Reading everyone's amazing results and enthusiasm is really driving it home that it's probably not in my families best interest I keep spending money on this hobby. I really wish I could get what I put into this tank back.

It kills me that I loved it for so long but my life is heading in a different direction I think.
 
It's tough sometimes. To add to my frustration, I actually wrote you a nice note yesterday in reply to this thread about how all we read about (usually) is people's success and the nice pictures of their tanks, but there's a lot of head and heart ache that goes into that.

What made me think of that was spending an hour and a half 2 nights ago just to glue down 4 corals, and the frustration that entails, a relatively simple and straightforward task. Every time I do something, I knock over 3 other things, have to glue them down or place them somewhere, chasing myself in circles, then because of the epoxy my skimmer overflows and algae grows (which is where I am now). So there's a lot of frustration even in the simplest or most mature of setups, it's just part of the game, and we don't vent about it enough (though I guess that would make for quite the boring thread).

I'm sorry to hear you're still having troubles. I'm hoping you pull through, though of course making the right decision for your family is definitely #1. It's really a shame there are no hobbyists locally with either cheap frags or who could offer to take a look at your setup, talk tank, or just assist generally. I know I've done that a lot over the years, and always enjoy doing it still.

Good luck, hope it gets better, and of course make the right choice for the family first.
 
Everything is the same. I listed my livestock on Craigslist and have had some people interested in the clownfish primarily. Had one of my cheap powerheads die from a power fluctuation the other day.

I have a few guilty feelings about selling the livestock because I always make such a big deal out of these saltwater set ups to much wife and she always lets me set them up and I eventually break them down and within a year want to set up again. But I think I'm done this time. The hobby is super expensive and I never have time for the tank with my job as a kitchen manager I'm always gone away from home anyway. I loved it as a kid and always dreamed of keeping a piece of the ocean at home.

I'll probably hang onto all the parts of this tank and maybe set it up again when we buy a house. I just need to sell the livestock to take it down.
 
And the process begins, someone coming to buy the clowns on Thursday and I've got a person using email like a text and doesn't exactly know what they want.
 
well, it could be good or it could be bad, I came back to the hobby just over a year ago now. I got an Evo 13.5 tank and it looks good. I just do water changes and stopped worrying so much about things and it's going well. After a year of battles with an aiptasia outbreak and bubble algae the tank looks good. weekly water changes with reef salt and scrapping bubble algae off. I only run carbon, filter floss and a tiny refugium. Killed the aiptasia with berghia nudibranch. recently have seen some new aiptasia, this was before addition of new inhabitants and corals so the berghia did great but not thorough enough. I'm thinking of getting more or peppermint shrimp to eat the rest. I'm leaning towards a trio of peppermint shrimp.

on a personal note I have become an executive chef, which opens my time up to care for the tank better and I am making more money so my woes of expensive inhabitants is sort of gone.
 
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