sfsuphysics
Supporting Member
I've been meaning to chime in here but have been on either my phone or tablet and I hate having to type anything of length of those, but now on my keyboard here we go.
There's a good chance it will get worse before it gets better. I've had all sorts of downs in this hobby, having gone from 180g tank that was a SPS oasis, and actually got featured in a reef magazine (UK one), and seeing that tank just fall apart was hard... like the worst. The crappy tank stayed with a while because it was really hard to get inspired to try and clean it up because the crux of the matter is that it still looked crappy inside. Eventually I got rid of it, and got a 375g tank (freebee!) and got inspired again, I got my rock laid out, zones of swimming, then that never really came about either, between the bubble algae and the aiptasia it left me again a broken soul. So I eventually got rid of that, no sense paying electricity to heat the thing if it was a glorified fish tank (with very few fish too), and I tossed my fish into the sump (which just so happened to be a 270g tank sectioned off with probably 200g of swimming room. I did this because of the fish, corals went to a holding tank so still had a bunch of acans and chalices. Then decided to move the holding tank because it had aiptasia growing all over it and I was going to clean it out big time, so the lps went into another tank... which wasn't properly cycled or something, and every piece of LPS died within 48 hours... I suspect something other than cycling though as quickly as that happened. So now it was down to some zoanthids, mushrooms and my fish.
Now why did I care about these fish? Well in a nutshell, 4 tangs that are health, one of which is a purple tang, and a foxface rabbit fish. Overall I would have happily given away fish like the rabbitfish but I felt it would be cruel unless he went into an equally large tank. Then I started to get inspired again... I would clean up the sump and turn it into a display tank, but we had one more monkey wrench thrown into play, my wife was pregnant. There was a lot of construction that had to be done too, new drywall, redo the floors since I ripped them out (and they had to it was literally 12' spans of 2x4s with zero bracing to the concrete below, which means it was almost like a bouncy house walking in there. Unfortunately priority was upstairs construction, baby room, our bedroom (mostly because every winter mold grew on the walls due to lack of insulation, and I wanted to nip that in the bud by putting in insulation, and then update the electrical, new lights in the ceiling, paint, redo the wood floors.... baby came a week earlier than anticipate, I wasn't done yet, and with some help from my uncles managed to bang it out in a few days. Then the real time crunch began, and luckily I had the summer off (teacher) so doing work could begin again, however the fish room area is a very low priority, but I was throwing a few beams in each day (maybe once a week since that's the only time I had free), blocking them off, putting bracing straight to the concrete, and overall making some progress... then school started and I have next to no time to do anything when everything else of a higher importance needs doing first. So that's been put on hold for a while, I hope I find an hour or two free where I am not either tired or have other work to do, then if I can put in a beam a week, I should be done with the floor in by Christmas
So long story short, what I would do in your hands depends upon what you got. Do you have any must have fish? must have corals? I'm assuming the corals all went kaput, which makes your task a lot easier. Is it a glass tank? because a razor blade can make it look like a new tank with 20 minutes of scraping. Is anything you want to keep worth paying more for (electricity to keep it warm). And you're moving next year... sounds almost like you made your decision for yourself. Sorry if I'm not inspiring, but sometimes taking a step back is needed to get the juices flowing again, because I sure as hell know what it's like to have little time on your hands. I mean hell I almost wish I didn't have any large fish myself, then downgrading to a smaller tank would be such an easy no brainer.
There's a good chance it will get worse before it gets better. I've had all sorts of downs in this hobby, having gone from 180g tank that was a SPS oasis, and actually got featured in a reef magazine (UK one), and seeing that tank just fall apart was hard... like the worst. The crappy tank stayed with a while because it was really hard to get inspired to try and clean it up because the crux of the matter is that it still looked crappy inside. Eventually I got rid of it, and got a 375g tank (freebee!) and got inspired again, I got my rock laid out, zones of swimming, then that never really came about either, between the bubble algae and the aiptasia it left me again a broken soul. So I eventually got rid of that, no sense paying electricity to heat the thing if it was a glorified fish tank (with very few fish too), and I tossed my fish into the sump (which just so happened to be a 270g tank sectioned off with probably 200g of swimming room. I did this because of the fish, corals went to a holding tank so still had a bunch of acans and chalices. Then decided to move the holding tank because it had aiptasia growing all over it and I was going to clean it out big time, so the lps went into another tank... which wasn't properly cycled or something, and every piece of LPS died within 48 hours... I suspect something other than cycling though as quickly as that happened. So now it was down to some zoanthids, mushrooms and my fish.
Now why did I care about these fish? Well in a nutshell, 4 tangs that are health, one of which is a purple tang, and a foxface rabbit fish. Overall I would have happily given away fish like the rabbitfish but I felt it would be cruel unless he went into an equally large tank. Then I started to get inspired again... I would clean up the sump and turn it into a display tank, but we had one more monkey wrench thrown into play, my wife was pregnant. There was a lot of construction that had to be done too, new drywall, redo the floors since I ripped them out (and they had to it was literally 12' spans of 2x4s with zero bracing to the concrete below, which means it was almost like a bouncy house walking in there. Unfortunately priority was upstairs construction, baby room, our bedroom (mostly because every winter mold grew on the walls due to lack of insulation, and I wanted to nip that in the bud by putting in insulation, and then update the electrical, new lights in the ceiling, paint, redo the wood floors.... baby came a week earlier than anticipate, I wasn't done yet, and with some help from my uncles managed to bang it out in a few days. Then the real time crunch began, and luckily I had the summer off (teacher) so doing work could begin again, however the fish room area is a very low priority, but I was throwing a few beams in each day (maybe once a week since that's the only time I had free), blocking them off, putting bracing straight to the concrete, and overall making some progress... then school started and I have next to no time to do anything when everything else of a higher importance needs doing first. So that's been put on hold for a while, I hope I find an hour or two free where I am not either tired or have other work to do, then if I can put in a beam a week, I should be done with the floor in by Christmas
So long story short, what I would do in your hands depends upon what you got. Do you have any must have fish? must have corals? I'm assuming the corals all went kaput, which makes your task a lot easier. Is it a glass tank? because a razor blade can make it look like a new tank with 20 minutes of scraping. Is anything you want to keep worth paying more for (electricity to keep it warm). And you're moving next year... sounds almost like you made your decision for yourself. Sorry if I'm not inspiring, but sometimes taking a step back is needed to get the juices flowing again, because I sure as hell know what it's like to have little time on your hands. I mean hell I almost wish I didn't have any large fish myself, then downgrading to a smaller tank would be such an easy no brainer.
