Is reefer a hobby?

[bauder1986]

meh, ive lost colonies of corals, ive lost fish, ive had tank burst at the seams at four in the morning and flood my bedroom, ive blown heater in tanks, lost more tanks, had insane algea blooms....its all part of the hobby and I love it! It gives me something to do! If it wasnt tough, then it wouldnt be interesting and the rewards in the end wouldnt be that great.

[ElGuappo]

Originally Posted by DiverDude

You just need to adjust your perspective a little.

As a reefer, to be 'at one with the tank', you just need to smoke a little reefer and all will be well. Try it, you'll see.

I mean, your fish may all die, but you won't notice

Originally Posted by bauder1986

meh, ive lost colonies of corals, ive lost fish, ive had tank burst at the seams at four in the morning and flood my bedroom, ive blown heater in tanks, lost more tanks, had insane algea blooms....its all part of the hobby and I love it! It gives me something to do! If it wasnt tough, then it wouldnt be interesting and the rewards in the end wouldnt be that great.

Agreed.

May just be me but the larger the effort hte larger the reward.

[kien]

I have a lot of hobbies and they are all equally rewarding and annoying (at times). Mountain bike breaks down, Cameras memory card dies; bye bye vacation photos! . Cat scratches up nice new carpet. Kids taking a permanent marker to the wall. We all have the ability to make choices for ourselves right? If it was that bad I wouldn't keep fish, I wouldn't have a cat, I wouldn't take pictures, I wouldn't have kids, simple as that. Through the good times and the bad, you must find some enjoyment out of it ? If not, then simply choose to do something else, like knitting Although, yarn tends to tangle so that could be annoying too..

[neoh]

I find it to be a keeping of an obsessive hobby.

[Dolf]

This is much more than a dog or cat. Yes, fish are underappreciated, but it is more than that. I don’t think that I have ever heard of the SPCA charging somebody with causing a SPS colony to suffer and die because they kept it under a single T-5 in a tank that was still cycling.

This is the perfect hobby for the budding megalomaniac- you have complete control over the environment of everything in your tank from light to temperature, salinity, nutrients, feed, water flow and what everything will have to live with as a neighbour. You become the vet and you need to do your research to be successful. Perhaps that is the relaxing part of this “hobby”- research and the feeling of keeping a diverse complete ecosystem where it would be considered impossible if not for your efforts (ever dropped a tang into Slave lake?) It is much more involved that keeping any large animal where the parameters are not only known- but it becomes immediately apparent if you have breeched those parameters.

This appeals to the researcher, the scientist, the artist and, again, the megalomaniac as a hobby. The frustrations are the price that you pay to have a very unique experience. One of the things that I most love is that there are thousands of ways to keep a tank that work and billions that don’t. This means that there are hard and fast rules but many rules can be bent and changed by “tweaking” a seemingly unrelated process.

Bauder hit it on the head when he said that if it were not challenging the rewards would not be worth it. If any idiot could run out and set up a tank it would loose it’s appeal to many of us. (O.K, any idiot can set it up- just not keep a challenging species successfully.) I suspect that most of us on this board enjoy a challenge and being able to see the results of our work and that it is that feeling of accomplishment that allows it to be classified as a hobby.

One final thought- even if you are staying home from work cleaning up water from the floor it was still “spare time” as you had nothing better to do than clean it up. If work were more important you would be there- you are filling your spare time with tank maintenance instead of work. So I argue that everything that we do on our tanks (even if it breaks “date night”, causes job loss, financial insecurity, ends in divorce, garners eye rolling, tears, blood or death) is done in our spare time.

[no_bs]

This is not a hobby. It's an addiction, like crack. Must have. Need it. Want it.

[burtonpj48]

Originally Posted by bauder[B

[/b] If it wasnt tough, then it wouldnt be interesting and the rewards in the end wouldnt be that great.

I agree, for some reason all the hardships you go thru with a tank, Is nothing in comparison to the reward you get for how beautiful it is. To be able to look at the tank, and be happy for what you have accomplished