I hate this hobby.

[MitchM]

I know this sound weird, but "great thread, Tony!"
I have had many frustrations with this hobby, and I've tried to look at the problem being with my perceptions, not with my reef.

I've noticed that flatworms bloom shortly before a cyano outbreak, that snails shells grow best when calcium is high, that for some strange reason, when my calcium reactor is shut down, the corals seem to do extremely well for about a week or so, that foraminiferans do great right in the middle of "everything going well", that my fish recognize me and are happy to see me and the food, not just some stranger, that the bigger the tank/system I have, the more predictible the fish behaviour is, the simpler and more maintenance free (read - bigger) my system is, the more time that I have for observing.
The list goes on.

I think that we make a mistake when we try to get perfection out of our mini reefs. Changes, evolutions happen, and we want everything to remain the same. Obviously, we can't make that happen.

The solution is to make a big, simple, mechanically stable system and watch what happens. What we expect, or are told what to expect, is usually what doesn't happen. That's what I love about it, and I try to make sure that I know enough to still ensure the safety of the fish and corals.
Get a bigger tank Tony, or give/sell that anemone to someone with a huge tank. There are big anemones in the wild and fish around them. I don't mean to be blunt, sorry.
I have never understood the thinking behind nano-reefs, relatively speaking. We don't need big expensive glass aquariums, but at least some serious water volume where all the various bacteria/macroalgaes/copepod/various pods can live out their life cycle and do what they do best.
In a smaller system, bad things will happen quickly and constantly.


Mitch