a while back I got an aquacultured clam from Neptunes, it's awesome, but it came with aiptasia. I've never had a tank with that before (even through all these years). I kept killing it with Joe's Juice, but it kept coming back. It was only a few on the side of the clam, but now, I just realized the aiptasia has spread.
I started the tank totally sterile, no live rock, and only frags into the tank (never with the base). But with these clams, there's nothing you can do about it. I'm sure I also brought in bryposis etc. from the clam or from various turbo snails I got as well.
Lesson learned, anything you bring in will come with some pest, no matter what. So why try in the first place?
So I'm currently battling:
- My stupid Liter Meter III, it sucks. calibration never works.
- Bryposis. Dosing with Tech M now.
- Aiptasia
- Skimmer: never skims, then all of a sudden overflows. Happens every 4 days and skims very little in between. I've gone through 3 skimmers now, wtf?
It's hard to stay motivated, but I think the mentality of these tanks is that, things will never be easy. So see them as stepping stones to maintaining a successful tank.
We always see beautiful pictures of people's tanks, and say: "why can't mine be like that?" but you never see behind the scenes. They're probably just treating their challenges differently.
I'll battle the aiptasia with Joe's Juice daily, try to kill Bryposis with the Tech M, and probably try to mod my auto feeder to feed less. One day... one day I'll get my tank going again.