[Coralgurl]

I was sitting in front of my tank last night and thinking, wow, what a difference a year makes. The livestock was added Mar 3/12 and so much has changed.

Its been a year of frustration, challenges and losses, but also of learning and progressing.

I absolutely love watching my fish, every one of them is quirky in their own ways, I definitely have favorites (flamehawk fish is top of that list, then my bluethroat trigger). Also, my bangaii cardinal which is my oldest fish being one of the first I bought almost 2 years ago. I wish I had a couple more of these guys but one is enough.

I lost 2 of my 3 first corals I bought 2 years ago, the first within a few months of the transfer (my huge wall frogspawn), the second just got pulled out of the tank a couple of weeks ago (button coral). These were big losses for me as they are what got me hooked on the hobby in the first place. Thankfully, the 3rd one is doing amazing and continuing to grow.

Also how cool it is to buy fish as babies and watch them grow from maybe an inch big to 5 inches or more and fat....love being a fish mom!

I have both a doser and controller for the tank, but not using either. Now that things are turned around and I'm not so overwhelmed with looking after 2 tanks, I am focusing on getting both set up and running efficiently. I've been doing weekly 30 gl water changes for a while now, think it will take a few more weeks to see if this has any impact on the corals, but I've also started feeding them Acan Plus, Reef Roids and Coral Frenzy. I see a huge difference in the LPS already, not sure why I stopped feeding before and suspect this is the reason for some losses, but not all. I do have a few pieces of SPS but so far have not been successful long term in keeping them alive. So, I'll keep going with what I have, but I think I'm sticking with the LPS and softies for the foreseeable future.

I've had so many fish jump, radiant wrasse, 2 solar wrasses, a clownfish, candy hogfish, and I'm sure a few more, I finally threw eggcrate on top. No adjustment to the tank lighting and all seems to be doing fine, if not actually a bit better, and no more carpet surfing.

We've also been looking at skinning the stand. Now that I'm comfortable with the equipment and the sump, time to cover it up. Unfortunately, I'm not having the year I had financially as I've had over the last 2, and actually have to live with a fish budget...lol, probably a good thing as its forced a slow down on stocking!

Overall, sitting in front of the tank, I realized I am so happy I didn't give up, this may be a girly thing to say, but I am so in love with my little reef its stupid. It may not be jam packed with corals (yet), or spectacular like a lot of your tanks are, but its coming along.