Caesar777
THE FROGURT ISALSO CURSED
This is my rant. Skip or skim, whatever.
Last week was my 25th birthday. I was stressed the entire week before it because I felt old, felt like I hadn't accomplished anything with my life. I was turning a quarter-century old! I officially feel old now, and I know you adults think it's silly, but I feel like I have no life, no prospects, etc.--the same stuff people feel when they're turning 30, 40, 50, and so on.
So I had an excellent birthday: I woke up to a crashed tank. I'd just moved the tank the day before: took everything out to put on a new stand, had it all in buckets while I did this, then put it all back in the tank. Done it a million times over the past ten years I've been reefing (not counting the two years of noobified fish-fowlrs). Woke up to a stench that could strip the paint off the walls and looked up to see a brown-white smelly, clouded tank, half my corals' tissue now brown slime coming off their bare skeletons, though luckily the two fish (hardy Springeri damsels, loved the little guys, and they protected my SPS from red bugs) survived. But then the container the fish and cleanup critters were in fouled before I could get a chance to get to the LFS, despite new water and a heater and powerhead. One of my friends (well-known here, Asthon) is absolutely a great friend, holding onto the corals that made it, though of course all my favorites and most expensive ones died, including the ones a friend had mailed me as a "no reason" gift. :'( I had hoped to spend my bday just takin' it easy but instead spent most of the day removing corals and putting them in his tank, then cleaning up the foul mess in the tank and taking the critters and fish out.
I figure--my hypothesis as to what went wrong--was that a few corals were stressed from being in the bucket longer than I'd expected, without a heater or powerhead because I didn't think it would take that long, and so they released stress hormones, and more when put back into the tank, which triggered others to do the same, ammonia went up, pH down, water all out of whack rapidly and everything crashed. Initially I didn't even want to start up a new tank. I went back and forth, mostly on the "no" side, but I have corals in that friend's tank so I may as well. So now I might do one, maybe my old 24 Aquapod, with a HOB skimmer like the Warner Marine H1 or, if it'll fit, this gigantic $300 Octopus one. So merry f++king Christmas. I kept telling myself, "Things happen, that's life," but it doesn't help that much. "Que será, será." What will be, will be.
RIP:
* Goldeneye chalice frag (My favorite :tears: )
* Goldeneye watermelon chalice frag
* Raspberry chalice frag
* "Original" Mummy eye, a little different than the more expensive "Oregon * Mummy Eye", tiny one-mouth piece
* Striped Alien eye chalice frag, really small piece
* Orenji chalice frag (which was going to be a gift for a friend)
* Cute little pink-and green "bubblegum" chalice
* Red chalice the size of my hand that had thick sky-blue streaks coming out the center, nice puffy one. Beautiful.
* PPE Favia, aka King Kong (gift from a friend)
* ATL Toxic Rose favia, beautiful glowing neon light green with pink centers
* Super-puffy "watermelon rum Favia", species I've never seen before, gift from a friend. Apparently super-rare.
* Another type of alien eye/watermelon chalice, blue with green glow and yellow eyes
* Red Cynarina lacrymalis
* Three mini carpet anemones: one purple with green rim, one neon green, one green and yellow divided like orange slices
* Prism Favia
* False (un-id'd species) & true (Favites pentagona) war corals, one each
* Giant orange lobo with teal-blue centers
* Acan lord, red with orange rings
* Acan lord, red with gray-blue outer edges (cheap but I thought it was cool)
* Red acan lordwith pink edging
* Green acan lord with purple, single polyp with a baby
* Small meteor shower cyphastrea
* Dragon Soul Favia, grown 3x larger than when I'd bought it and nicer than any I've seen.
* Green-polyp leather and frags
* Rainbow "Barney" monti
* True Oregon tort frag
* German blue-polyp
* Miami Orchid
* Super-pink Pocillipora, nice small-med-sized nubs
Survived:
* 4" Mini-Maxi carpet anemone, amazing psychedelic colors and pattern
* Two pink-centered sky-blue Favias, almost like a Baby's breath but without the yellow tinge and more sparkliness
* My two frags of Purple Death palys (luckily, I LOVE these)
* My four PPE's
* Two frags of powder-blue palys
* Pink matting palys
* Armageddon palys
* Several other zoa rocks
* Rainbow-splashed-center Red Acan lord
* About 10 other frags I can't remember at the moment.
So now I'm starting all over, this time with that Aquapod 24. Need a 20" halide, btw--the all-in-ones that sit on legs, since I can't hang things from the ceiling, but I'm hard up for cash so I can't spend too much.
That's my pointless sob-story. I cried when I looked at the photo of the corals, remembering their beauty and peace, their relaxing presence, their rewarding growth... At least I have some corals left. I could learn a reefing lesson from this, but I don't know what I did differently than any of the other times. Every negative has a positive, though, and while it sucks that I had to get a reminder from losing live organisms, perhaps it was a lesson in not hoarding, not being too reliant on physical goods to be happy, and dealing with the fact that bad things happen even to good people (and even me).
And a relevant Metalocalypse quote to end the day, speaking of birthdays: "The fact that my parents had sex to create me makes me want to be buried alive." - Nathan Explosion
Last week was my 25th birthday. I was stressed the entire week before it because I felt old, felt like I hadn't accomplished anything with my life. I was turning a quarter-century old! I officially feel old now, and I know you adults think it's silly, but I feel like I have no life, no prospects, etc.--the same stuff people feel when they're turning 30, 40, 50, and so on.
So I had an excellent birthday: I woke up to a crashed tank. I'd just moved the tank the day before: took everything out to put on a new stand, had it all in buckets while I did this, then put it all back in the tank. Done it a million times over the past ten years I've been reefing (not counting the two years of noobified fish-fowlrs). Woke up to a stench that could strip the paint off the walls and looked up to see a brown-white smelly, clouded tank, half my corals' tissue now brown slime coming off their bare skeletons, though luckily the two fish (hardy Springeri damsels, loved the little guys, and they protected my SPS from red bugs) survived. But then the container the fish and cleanup critters were in fouled before I could get a chance to get to the LFS, despite new water and a heater and powerhead. One of my friends (well-known here, Asthon) is absolutely a great friend, holding onto the corals that made it, though of course all my favorites and most expensive ones died, including the ones a friend had mailed me as a "no reason" gift. :'( I had hoped to spend my bday just takin' it easy but instead spent most of the day removing corals and putting them in his tank, then cleaning up the foul mess in the tank and taking the critters and fish out.
I figure--my hypothesis as to what went wrong--was that a few corals were stressed from being in the bucket longer than I'd expected, without a heater or powerhead because I didn't think it would take that long, and so they released stress hormones, and more when put back into the tank, which triggered others to do the same, ammonia went up, pH down, water all out of whack rapidly and everything crashed. Initially I didn't even want to start up a new tank. I went back and forth, mostly on the "no" side, but I have corals in that friend's tank so I may as well. So now I might do one, maybe my old 24 Aquapod, with a HOB skimmer like the Warner Marine H1 or, if it'll fit, this gigantic $300 Octopus one. So merry f++king Christmas. I kept telling myself, "Things happen, that's life," but it doesn't help that much. "Que será, será." What will be, will be.
RIP:
* Goldeneye chalice frag (My favorite :tears: )
* Goldeneye watermelon chalice frag
* Raspberry chalice frag
* "Original" Mummy eye, a little different than the more expensive "Oregon * Mummy Eye", tiny one-mouth piece
* Striped Alien eye chalice frag, really small piece
* Orenji chalice frag (which was going to be a gift for a friend)
* Cute little pink-and green "bubblegum" chalice
* Red chalice the size of my hand that had thick sky-blue streaks coming out the center, nice puffy one. Beautiful.
* PPE Favia, aka King Kong (gift from a friend)
* ATL Toxic Rose favia, beautiful glowing neon light green with pink centers
* Super-puffy "watermelon rum Favia", species I've never seen before, gift from a friend. Apparently super-rare.
* Another type of alien eye/watermelon chalice, blue with green glow and yellow eyes
* Red Cynarina lacrymalis
* Three mini carpet anemones: one purple with green rim, one neon green, one green and yellow divided like orange slices
* Prism Favia
* False (un-id'd species) & true (Favites pentagona) war corals, one each
* Giant orange lobo with teal-blue centers
* Acan lord, red with orange rings
* Acan lord, red with gray-blue outer edges (cheap but I thought it was cool)
* Red acan lordwith pink edging
* Green acan lord with purple, single polyp with a baby
* Small meteor shower cyphastrea
* Dragon Soul Favia, grown 3x larger than when I'd bought it and nicer than any I've seen.
* Green-polyp leather and frags
* Rainbow "Barney" monti
* True Oregon tort frag
* German blue-polyp
* Miami Orchid
* Super-pink Pocillipora, nice small-med-sized nubs
Survived:
* 4" Mini-Maxi carpet anemone, amazing psychedelic colors and pattern
* Two pink-centered sky-blue Favias, almost like a Baby's breath but without the yellow tinge and more sparkliness
* My two frags of Purple Death palys (luckily, I LOVE these)
* My four PPE's
* Two frags of powder-blue palys
* Pink matting palys
* Armageddon palys
* Several other zoa rocks
* Rainbow-splashed-center Red Acan lord
* About 10 other frags I can't remember at the moment.
So now I'm starting all over, this time with that Aquapod 24. Need a 20" halide, btw--the all-in-ones that sit on legs, since I can't hang things from the ceiling, but I'm hard up for cash so I can't spend too much.
That's my pointless sob-story. I cried when I looked at the photo of the corals, remembering their beauty and peace, their relaxing presence, their rewarding growth... At least I have some corals left. I could learn a reefing lesson from this, but I don't know what I did differently than any of the other times. Every negative has a positive, though, and while it sucks that I had to get a reminder from losing live organisms, perhaps it was a lesson in not hoarding, not being too reliant on physical goods to be happy, and dealing with the fact that bad things happen even to good people (and even me).
And a relevant Metalocalypse quote to end the day, speaking of birthdays: "The fact that my parents had sex to create me makes me want to be buried alive." - Nathan Explosion
