How do you pick yourself up after a loss?

[Reefering1]

Had my first few big (for me) losses this week. Feeling deflated and frustrated.

For those who’ve been in the hobby for a while (or a little) how do you pick yourself up after a loss or run of losses?

I just add up all the thousands and thousands of dollars wrapped up in the tank and convince myself that it's too late to stop now

 

[RichReef]

I am a troubleshooter by nature. Finding and correcting the problem brings satisfaction and confidence for me.

 

[Dburr1014]

Had my first few big (for me) losses this week. Feeling deflated and frustrated.

For those who’ve been in the hobby for a while (or a little) how do you pick yourself up after a loss or run of losses?

Back to basics, reset the tank with a water change. Measure it all and clean it all up.
Go slow with additions. Learn from the mistake.
These systems we build are a balancing act. Don't beat yourself up to much OP.
You need many hats to build the systems and we can't be proficient in all of them.

 

[spicymikey]

Had my first few big (for me) losses this week. Feeling deflated and frustrated.

For those who’ve been in the hobby for a while (or a little) how do you pick yourself up after a loss or run of losses?

The grief is real, especially if you're talking about fish, and DEFINITELY if it died because of something stupid we do. When I've lost fish that I had long enough to interact with and learn their personalities, it was almost as bad as loosing a house pet. I guess in some ways it is the same thing. Corals, not so much. I feel bad but its not as bad for obvious reasons. In the end its just like any other personal lose I suppose. Time heals the pain. Don't give up on the hobby unless there are other reasons making you question it all. Certainly don't continue if you cannot find the proper time to care for them. Good luck!

 

[face]

I just think about the weaknesses my system had and how my fresh start will be better.

 

[00W]

Like Brandon said, read, read,read. Study, study, study. We are lucky to have a place to go for help here. When I started this hobby in 1987 I had no resources so no matter how long I do this, I will have a place to study along the way. I'm thankful for that.
I go slow, slow and slower with what I do.
Keep your head up.
Regards.
Joel

 

[o2manyfish]

It's going to depend on what caused the loss.

Is it something that was out of your control, non-repeatable, and unforseeable. Or was it a mistake you made.

For me the mistakes I have made over the years are easier to bounce back from - because I know what caused the problem and I can insure that "that" mistake doesn't repeat itself.

But the unconceivable - Those are the ones for me that just make the losses so overwhelming. Cause I don't know how to stop it from happening again.

14 years ago my tank was running with a surge tank on a 2nd story balcony. The 'tank' was a 30g water storage container. All the plumbing was internal in the tank. And of top of it was a 3/4" acrylic lid. While at my sister's wedding a Rat knocked the 3/4" lid off the top of the tank, fell into the surge tank and got sucked into the 2" Carlson Surge pipe inlet. Stuffing the pipe. Being there were no mechanical parts to this surge system. It was all gravity and gravity never fails, I never expected a 2" pipe to get clogged. There was an independent pump hidden in the bottom of the tank under the aquascape that pumped the water up to the balcony. Well that pump kept chugging along and pumped all the water from the tank up onto the balcony.

I came home at 1:30 in the morning to a bad smell. The halide lights were on, the corals looked amazing, but the there was only a few inches of water sitting in a packed 400g reef. It took about 20 minutes to figure out what happened. I thought the tank had blew a seam - But there was no water on the ground anywhere.

I filled the tank with a garden hose mixing salt as I went. And everything looked amazing. And when the tank was finally full of salt water I turned all the pumps back on. Like it was a magic trick when the pumps turned on the tank burst into a cloud - as all the tissue just jumped off the coral skeletons. In seconds the beautiful rainbow reef turned into a white skeleton dead zone in a cloud of grey.

I spent a few days crying in front of the tank. And I decided I needed a break. So I shut off all the 'equipment' and lights, left the return pump, heater and top off on. And left the tank there.

I'm an fish addict, so I knew I would come back to it one day. But I wasn't in the mood to deal with it. I wasn't in the mood for 9 months. Then I got diagnosed with Kidney Cancer. I didn't want to deal with that without a beautiful fish tank to get lost in. So I turned the lights on. Pressured washed all the live rock, did a massive water change. And got back into reefing.

For me it's a little different than most because I am addicted to fish/water - Boating, Scuba, Aquariums, Tropical Vacations, Fish Themed Home are all what my life is about. I have no children, at the time of the rat incident I had no wife, and I have been fortunate to always be able to afford this hobby, at the extreme ends, without it affecting my lifestyle.

So for me there will always be a fish tank. Sometimes bringing joy, sometimes bringing frustration, and sometimes needing a short break.

Dave B

 

[taricha]

I try to figure out whether it was avoidable/foreseeable or not.
If avoidable, then I'm going to learn something and be ok with that. If it's not avoidable I'm going to give myself a pass, and not think about it too much - but re-evaluate what sorts of things I want to keep.
Can I keep great stuff that will be more forgiving of the things that are uncontrollable?
I've decided several times exactly that.
There are a lot of different ways to run a tank and ways to make the tank and its inhabitants more or less demanding.

 

[sawdonkey]

I used to live in a three-unit condo building. I owned the two bottom floors and my 220 gallon tank was in the basement. I had it completely grown out with big acro colonies and large fish, many of which I’d owned for 8+ years.

My neighbor on the top floor had a huge fire on his roof deck. The fire department put thousands of gallons of water on the building and completely ruined everything ($900K worth of damage). The tank survived until a couple days later when the mitigation company blew a breaker and didn’t bother to turn it back on. All fish but my two triggers died and most coral too. Totally devastated!!!

I used the opportunity to build it back better after nine months of renovation. I fixed most everything I didn’t like about then prior build.

Here is my tank prior to the fire.

and here is my comeback after a couple years

Since then, I moved and lost a good portion of my coral and basically started over again….fixing things I didn’t like about my prior builds all along the way.

 

[findingsimple]

Wow thank you everyone for sharing you experiences, up and downs

 

[BaliReefBox]

I had a pair of clowns...the larger one, female Im guessing, disappeared literally between breakfast an dinner...searched the floor, rockwork, everywhere.....she doesnt want to be found....
How do you pick ya self up.....off to the fish shop and reload...imo things are going to happen...its life

 

[reefsaver]

When I lose an animal in my aquarium it really hurts. But I see it more as an opportunity to do right by my aquarium and do my absolute best to diagnose what could have caused the problem and how I could make sure it never happens again.

 

[Reefer Matt Verified Media Partner]

Had my first few big (for me) losses this week. Feeling deflated and frustrated.

For those who’ve been in the hobby for a while (or a little) how do you pick yourself up after a loss or run of losses?

Every reefer will have losses at any given point. That is the nature of keeping so much life in a tank. While there are certainly steps you can take to minimize loss, it will always occur. For me, reefing isn't a hobby. Reefing is who I am, and I take the good with the bad. If an entire tank were to get wiped out (knock on wood), I would restart it with something better, after I learned what went wrong.
However, those that continuously have loses, and don't have the patience to care for a reef, should rethink things for themselves. Not saying that is you, just offering the other end of the spectrum.
If you have the desire to make reefing a part of your life, then I think you will find a way to make it work for your situation. I wish you good luck and happy reefing.

 

[DeniseAndy]

If you are in this long enough, losses happen. I had ups and downs and things I learned from in the early years. I still will try new things every once in a while and it will not go as planned. I have had two big losses and the reason was obvious in both, but I mourned the losses and continued on. I knew how to conquer them and do better.

Sometimes I lose corals or fish unexpectedly. It happens. Some just do not thrive in my systems. If that happens, I avoid those in the future.

This can be a really tough hobby due to our love of the animals we keep. Sometimes life happens and even our best is not enough to keep some of our creatures happy and healthy.

When you are ready, the itch comes back. Trudge forward with better experience, more knowledge and more determination.

 

[Sharkie_Conch]

Everyone has mostly said what I am going to say, but I'll add anyway.

We've only been in the hobby two years (today is our OG tank's 2 year anniversary), but we are ocean people (scuba divers, reefers, both of us have always enjoyed aquariums and fish, our house is slowly gaining more ocean theming, etc).

Random fish losses frustrate us. Coral losses we expect but try to learn from each. The worst was when we thought we finally hit a good point for corals and splurged and then lost most of them a few months later. We got quite upset then.

We have 2 tanks (technically 3 as we transition from the original 55g to our upgrade tank), and luckily so far they tend to have problems at different times so that helps distract from the issues and get us in a positive mindset.

Our upgrade tank we had added our fish over a few months and moved over our OG nearly 2 year old fish and done everything strategically...and then one of the fish must have brought in velvet. We lost 10 fish I think over the course of a week. I cried for an evening when we realized and my husband went and prepped a hospital tank. Right now we are over halfway through our treatment and fallow periods and are focusing on the fact that we were able to keep two alive so far even though so many died before and during hospitalization. If even one makes it back in the tank post treatment and fallow period, we will consider it a success. If not then it's a learning experience.

Ironically when we stopped caring about our OG tank and left it alone, corals rebounded and took off growing haha.

 

[|Frank|]

I took a break, went to freshwater in my big tank. Got a small tank after a few months and went salt again in that. Keep persevering! There's going to be ups and downs in anything. Never quit, always learn from mistakes. I hope you bounce back!

 

[brandon429]

Hardware failure and weather events=outside our control. Everyone will get that type of loss one day at least

Honing in biological controls will reduce the #1 cause of losses though, that's a bright motivator to continue honing best practices

 

[jft]

In Life and with tanks if you get knocked down 100 times YOU MAKE SURE YOU GET UP 101 times, Good Luck!

 

[ultraArcite]

In this hobby with the type of money we invest you just need to keep going.

Not to be contrary, but this is the definition of the sunken cost fallacy. If you're not enjoying the hobby, you should stop doing it. If you enjoyed it before whatever bad thing happened, you should continue. Don't continue to spend MORE money on something you don't enjoy because you already spent money on it.