Why do so many people leave the hobby?

Ryan15236 · Dec 14, 2015

I am going to have to take a break right now as I am 22 and just graduated college so there is no telling where I may end up and what job and/or graduate school I may attend. Just not the right time but I will be back!

Paul B · Dec 14, 2015

Don't stay gone to long.

Mark_D · Dec 14, 2015

I think many people go overboard with equipment etc and cost becomes the main issue. You can run a beautiful tank with just the basics...

Big65 · Dec 14, 2015

Finances, job loss, job relocation, burned out, boredom, bit off more than they could chew, became to costly to continue, crisis after crisis, I left after moving from rent free to rent and the cost was to much for me to consider going back specially after I let my gear go 3 years later it was definitely out of the question. Right now I'm at a point where I could start building a new setup but I want to wait a little longer.

Tjakes680 · Dec 14, 2015

Paul B said:
Why do so many people get out of the hobby?
This hobby has been around for 44 years and yet you can count the number of tanks that are at least 20 years old on one hand. OK, maybe two, I didn't really count, but work with me. The vast majority of threads are very new tanks and the second largest number of threads besides disease threads is "Getting out of the hobby, everything for sale" threads. Why is that?
I think I know. It takes a special (weird) type of person to keep at this for a large number of years. By that I mean a person with more varied interests than just keeping some beautiful fish alive. When I started, me and Moses would sit and watch our guppies. After we managed to keep the fish alive we got so excited to see them spawn. Then we would sit up all night with an eye dropper so we could feed each one individually and watch it grow. We were horrified when one (or most of them) died. And they were guppies. Then when we were proficient with breeding different strains of guppies to get different colors we tried mollies, then swordtails and any livebearers we could get our hands on. But that got boring and we needed more of a challenge. There were so many fish to choose from. We had kissing gourami’s, angelfish, discus, zebra’s and bettas with their very cool bubble nests. We did this for years until that was so easy that we did not get excited when our fish spawned. Not being exciting is death to a hobby and we almost went on to other endeavors like trying to guess the phone numbers of Supermodels. But wait. Something happened just in the nick of time that kept us in the hobby.
Someone imported salt water fish into the US. I don't remember who that was but whoever he was, it kept my interest because now I no longer needed to watch my freshwater fish spawn as that was boring because everyone was able to do it. If anyone can do it, it isn't as much fun because we couldn't brag about our success and get fish Geek points. The thrill was gone.
But saltwater fish opened up an entirely new field that no one knew anything about. If a store sold salt water fish they had a huge sign in their window proclaiming that they had salt water fish. That usually meant they had a 5 gallon tank with three, ich infested blue devils and a depressed domino with a social disease on his way to having last rites. But those damsels were so fascinating because now, we again had bragging rites and although we were not very good at keeping these guys alive, no one else could either. Eventually our damsels spawned for us and we were again able to get out the eye dropper and stay up late at night feeding them one at a time. The thrill was back. Much of the thrill was that there was virtually no information available about these things, I mean none, and computers were not invented yet so every day that we kept a damsel alive was a thrill, sort of like bungee jumping but different. I really miss those days as now it is simple to keep most fish alive and to kill a damsel you need to lay it in the street and have a 1957 Chevy Malibu run over it, twice.
Now with the internet and advice coming from every little village on earth there is very little thrill at all. If you need to know something all you do is Google it and an entire plethora of information is at your fingertips. Of course almost all of it is wrong based on rumor, conjecture, supposition, guesswork, innuendos, and drug induced rantings by someone who started a tank last Tuesday and now is the resident expert.
I myself have been doing this a while so I know better on a few things but I can see how it can be overwhelming. I read so many things that I am so opposed to that it drives me nuts so I limit my posts on almost all forums now because of the arguments. Of course I am also old and opinionated so I guess I also am easy to argue with. My old school theories are debunked by young college grads with all sorts of book learning and a cell phone with a google app ready to find something to disagree with. That is fine and is the way of the world. But I think the main reason so many people drop out is that most of the thrill is gone. Almost every fish that can be kept, is kept. We can now keep fish for their entire normal lifespan with no problems.
Thank God for corals. Those gems are still a source of wonder as there are so many types with different needs and so many opinions as to their care. How much light? How much current? Do they need to be fed? What is the best temperature and salinity? How much nitrate can they handle and how much do they need, if any? Would a Supermodel be able to successfully keep a coral? No one really knows so the hobby has hope.

Tjakes680 · Dec 14, 2015

Paul B said:
Why do so many people get out of the hobby?
This hobby has been around for 44 years and yet you can count the number of tanks that are at least 20 years old on one hand. OK, maybe two, I didn't really count, but work with me. The vast majority of threads are very new tanks and the second largest number of threads besides disease threads is "Getting out of the hobby, everything for sale" threads. Why is that?
I think I know. It takes a special (weird) type of person to keep at this for a large number of years. By that I mean a person with more varied interests than just keeping some beautiful fish alive. When I started, me and Moses would sit and watch our guppies. After we managed to keep the fish alive we got so excited to see them spawn. Then we would sit up all night with an eye dropper so we could feed each one individually and watch it grow. We were horrified when one (or most of them) died. And they were guppies. Then when we were proficient with breeding different strains of guppies to get different colors we tried mollies, then swordtails and any livebearers we could get our hands on. But that got boring and we needed more of a challenge. There were so many fish to choose from. We had kissing gourami’s, angelfish, discus, zebra’s and bettas with their very cool bubble nests. We did this for years until that was so easy that we did not get excited when our fish spawned. Not being exciting is death to a hobby and we almost went on to other endeavors like trying to guess the phone numbers of Supermodels. But wait. Something happened just in the nick of time that kept us in the hobby.
Someone imported salt water fish into the US. I don't remember who that was but whoever he was, it kept my interest because now I no longer needed to watch my freshwater fish spawn as that was boring because everyone was able to do it. If anyone can do it, it isn't as much fun because we couldn't brag about our success and get fish Geek points. The thrill was gone.
But saltwater fish opened up an entirely new field that no one knew anything about. If a store sold salt water fish they had a huge sign in their window proclaiming that they had salt water fish. That usually meant they had a 5 gallon tank with three, ich infested blue devils and a depressed domino with a social disease on his way to having last rites. But those damsels were so fascinating because now, we again had bragging rites and although we were not very good at keeping these guys alive, no one else could either. Eventually our damsels spawned for us and we were again able to get out the eye dropper and stay up late at night feeding them one at a time. The thrill was back. Much of the thrill was that there was virtually no information available about these things, I mean none, and computers were not invented yet so every day that we kept a damsel alive was a thrill, sort of like bungee jumping but different. I really miss those days as now it is simple to keep most fish alive and to kill a damsel you need to lay it in the street and have a 1957 Chevy Malibu run over it, twice.
Now with the internet and advice coming from every little village on earth there is very little thrill at all. If you need to know something all you do is Google it and an entire plethora of information is at your fingertips. Of course almost all of it is wrong based on rumor, conjecture, supposition, guesswork, innuendos, and drug induced rantings by someone who started a tank last Tuesday and now is the resident expert.
I myself have been doing this a while so I know better on a few things but I can see how it can be overwhelming. I read so many things that I am so opposed to that it drives me nuts so I limit my posts on almost all forums now because of the arguments. Of course I am also old and opinionated so I guess I also am easy to argue with. My old school theories are debunked by young college grads with all sorts of book learning and a cell phone with a google app ready to find something to disagree with. That is fine and is the way of the world. But I think the main reason so many people drop out is that most of the thrill is gone. Almost every fish that can be kept, is kept. We can now keep fish for their entire normal lifespan with no problems.
Thank God for corals. Those gems are still a source of wonder as there are so many types with different needs and so many opinions as to their care. How much light? How much current? Do they need to be fed? What is the best temperature and salinity? How much nitrate can they handle and how much do they need, if any? Would a Supermodel be able to successfully keep a coral? No one really knows so the hobby has hope.

I have been in this hobby since the early 80s and at one point owned and operated 2 LFS in Brooklyn NY both pre Sandy and before the internet exploded , but as far as I can tell Sandy had alot to do with people leaving the hobby the lack of friendly trust worthy personal hobbiest owned shops could be another and truth be told many people jump into this hobby with no clue on what it takes to keep a sucessful reef and after many problems and many pieces of failed equiptment ( because of no research ) just throw in the towel I have only brok down my tanks for the sole reason of moving to a new home but every home I have ever lived in has a saltwTer tank including my current home I guess it takes a special person who can do this long term I have gone from 15 tanks at once to 1 tank now a 125 mixed reef it just takes a special person to do this long term

Newb73 · Dec 14, 2015

Mark_D said:
I think many people go overboard with equipment etc and cost becomes the main issue. You can run a beautiful tank with just the basics...

Different personalities. The equipment side of it is one of the things that attracts me to the hobby.

I am sort of the anti-Paul as I own every test kit there is, my tank controller is the heart of my system. I do two 3% water changes a week...and often times three or four. I try to over feed my fish and still keep nutrients close to zero which IS NOT easy to do. I have 5 different kinds of pumps, twin returns, a dosing system, two tanks totalling about 400g and I can control everything with remote controls and the controller. ..my back ups have back ups. The only thing I don't have currently is a par meter and I'm currently trying to figure out how to talk the wife into turning a small office area into one giant sump room at least 200 gallons....

If I had to cut 98% of my time out of the hobby due to other responsibilities I'd just fill the tank up with zoas and torch corals (two types of corals I've found are impossible to kill even when I'm at my worst) and I'd STILL consider all the investment in equipment well spent.

Having said that, when it comes to pumps, some times controllers and even test kits.....expect hobby grade equipment to always being susceptible to failure all the time

I suspect the old times success comes from not using much of the equipment that can fail in the first place while newbs frustration comes from an unrealistic expectation that aquarium equipment be more reliable than it is....

I've had lightening hit my controller, 120+ tanks just spontaneously bust.....wave makers are a constant source of frustration as are main pumps, skimmer pumps and ato units.. lack of planning kills the hobby for a lot of people in this regard.

Failure to plan for equipment failure = a plan to fail.

My main pump, wave makers, controller, and ato could all go out the same time during a power failure with a flooded stand and I'd still be back up in an hour with back up equipment, back up power and not a drop of water on the floor.

Bruce Burnett · Dec 14, 2015

I personally do not know anyone that permanently got out of the hobby because of boredom. I started keeping fish 40 years ago and saltwater tanks over 30 years ago. I was out of it for 7 years and just got back into it a year ago. Most everyone I know got out of keeping fish because of disgust or anger over a tank crash, my father was breeding discus in the 60's and when he lost most everything during a move he sold everything. The next reason is life is fluid with many changes and then hobbies suffer. With the economy and expenses closing so many LFS it means more mail order for supplies and livestock. Since I moved the closest one is now over 2 1/2 hour away.

shred5 · Dec 14, 2015

I have been in the hobby a very long time about 30 years reef, much longer just saltwater and freshwater fish. Most of the people I have associated with early on are still in the reef hobby. It has been the ones the last 10 to 15 years maybe a little longer that leave. Almost all my personal friends that I met in the hobby during that time have left and it is allot of them.. A few come back briefly...

I can tell you why almost all have left and there are several reasons.

For allot it is burn out. Too many got in way too deep to fast and burned out, It is easy to do.. So many set up too big of tanks, too many tanks, frag tanks or even businesses. The hobby can get expensive and too large of a tank or too many tanks can become allot of work.... Just in way over there head and when interest drops, have to work overtime, family issues or other things become important, they have all these tanks etc.

Another big thing is collectors. They spend so much money and then even when there is a little crash they lose so much money it is disheartening. I have seen a few that got in so deep it almost ruined them financially too..

Another issue is those that do not spend the time to learn biology and when something goes wrong they are in trouble. Allot of these people are the ones looking for a quick fix.. These are the ones usually with issues they can not fix or do stuff to make things worse. Allot of the people are more into equipment or corals. Early on it was about biology.

Paul you talk about bad advice and I agree there is allot of this. Allot of the advice is just parroting. Allot of the people that I consider advanced users (these are the people who have been in the hobby a while and proven them selves with keeping a nice aquarium for a decent period of time) have left the message boards..

They left because it is hard to give good advice anymore, too many are here looking to do something they already they know they cannot or should not do.. Example I gave some advice the other day on some fish that should not be kept together, you know where 99 people have had issues and maybe one person had had success at least for now. Well that one person post yea I have had no issues and that person listens to that one person.
You go to help someone clear up an algae issue and instead of listening they dump some chemical in which makes it worse or solves it temporarily because someone said it worked for them...Frustrating..

I think equipment has made this hobby allot easier which allows people to move faster then they should. It also seems to become a crutch for biology. When something goes wrong people dont know what to do..

To me those that are going to survive this hobby take it slow, do not get in over there head and learn the biology... They also dont get too heavily into collecting..

SurlyT · Dec 14, 2015

Dinoflagellates.

kandymann · Dec 15, 2015

I have been in the hobby for going on 7 years. I have had many failures but many success stories as well. Apathy has set in on a few different occasions but that was due to lazyness and an ugly tank. Now I know how to do the most minimal work for the a gorgeous tank.

My motivation has shifed in a whole new direction. I am no longer just an ornamental hobbyist. I am very much into marine aquaculture and breeding. I have a Noah's ark fish tank room. I have almost a pair of every fish I possess.

I have:

Aussie epaulette shark pair
Venustus angelfish pair
Multibar angelfish pair
Red striped Goby pair (wheelers Goby)
Yellow Prawn Goby pair x2 (spawning)
Banggai Cardinal pair (male full of eggs now)
Elibi and lemon peel angel pair
Neon Goby pair
Maroon gold stripe clownfish pair
Snowflake ocellaris clownfish pair
Regal tang pair
Queen angel pair

Marine fish breeding is my new passion and the more I learn the closer I become to reaching new heights in this hobby that I will make this not just profitable but uber profitbale.

Don't get me wrong. I don't expect to breed/spawn every pair successfully but it's the thrill of that happening along with the knowledge of how to care for the offspring that drives me to be patient and learn learn learn.

chimmike · Dec 15, 2015

I didn't leave due to boredom. I left because the tank took an inordinate amount of space in the office, and I felt like all I was doing was scraping corraline off the glass every day. Nothing seemed to grow though everything looked good....and I was due to drop $160 in new t5 bulbs only to result in an algae bloom that i'd have to deal with.

I was tired and my daughter was 1, so that didn't help much either.

BryanD · Dec 15, 2015

They don't go slow enough, dump a bunch of money into the hobby, then leave when things don't go well. Every time I see a beautiful tank full of LPS and SPS, stocked to the max with fish, crystal clear with no algae, etc, then look at the description and see its someone new to the hobby and the tank is less than 6 months old, I cringe. Is it impossible? No, especially the more money you spend. But I'm sure there are a lot of people that either don't realize how much you are going to have to spend to keep a tank like that clean without effort (or proper "seasoning"), or how much effort it is going to take if you don't dump a boatload of money on it. Start small (livestock-wise) and go slow. Most important "secret" this hobby has.

dallasg · Dec 15, 2015

i asked this once on my local forum here in South Africa. Our biggest issue is cost, everything is priced in USD and we have a lousy exchange rate.
but further to that i have various reasons which i seen over the last 20 odd years here so not it holds for USA.

The biggest issue are our lfs's, i think maybe 2% are actually reefers, so the information, livestock and available hardware here are all sold, ordered and made with very little regard for the reefer, its all about profit.
on the otherside of the coin i blame the reefer, we make all these decisions, impulse buys etc and how many of us educate ourselves before hand? research that new fish, setup QT? as it will never happen to me etc, we all know the story. so we make the bad choices and ask why when things all go pear shaped, spend more money, get more snake oils etc and then eventually leave. of course these are generalisations but they are more common than we think. the ultimate prophet of doom is technology, "we" all fall back on it and hope it fixes the problem, it drives the costs up and the benefit i believe is not always worth the reward.
so technology drives up the costs and at some point it becomes unsustainable. yes this hobby can be expensive, all hobbies are, we need to make sure new reefers are educated which here in SA is hard as the lfs's are mostly profit driven, i have nitrate issues, but a led lamp

get a new skimmer, add this, ah and buy more LR...

i think this is one of those hobbies that just lacks balance and the passion of shopkeepers to sustain the hobby, spend big $$$$ now and make the sale, instead of make smaller margins and keep customers over years....

domination2580 · Dec 15, 2015

Maybe it's the fact that the tanks that are 20 years old or more started out way back when there wasn't a lot of info on keeping tanks running. The people who are 20 plus years of tank raising are the ones who experimented and figured things out. They didn't have the information we now have so with little information I think a lot of people failed over and over and just said screw it and got out. The ones with the diligence are the ones with the 20+ years. We just finally got info on a lot of things for tanks hence allege new tanks.

Paul B · Dec 15, 2015

In the years my tank has been up Sandy was only one hurricane that turned off my power. I probably lost power 12 times in 40 years where it was out for more than a day. Sandy I was out 4 days. Once it was out for 6 days. But after the first outage I got a generator. Now, if you can afford a reef tank, you can afford a generator because it is less than a controller or some of the other equipment many people use. I think my generator was about 4 or 5 hundred dollars but it has saved me thousands not only in fish tanks but it food and heat for my family. In the early, pre generator days I used to use my SCUBA tanks to operate an air stone during blackouts. If I didn't have that I would just take water out of the tank every few hours and dump it back in. I never lost an animal due to a blackout. Of course most of those blackouts were in the warmer weather and if I lost heat, I would have been in trouble. But now my generator does that. During Sandy I ran out of gas for my generator so now I converted it to natural gas. I bought a kit for $200.00 for that and now it runs on natural gas and gasoline. I also have back up pumps and lights for emergencies. I am the type of person who is pro active, not re active which is why I have solar panels on my roof and a new heating system that reduced my heat bills by over $4,000.00 a year.
Of course we will have blackouts, that is a fact of life so we need to deal "before" it happens. Some people lost their livestock to ich. I have written articles about that and my fish are immune. Immunity is not much understood because many of us are under the impression that quarantining is the way to go. I do not and feel and think that quarantining is the worst thing for this hobby and feel it is the reason for so many disease threads. But don't stop quarantining as there is a lot more to it than that. That is why I wrote a book, because of so much old thinking I don't need the arguments. But there is a better way.
We can't help family sickness and I realize many of us leave because of that. That may happen in my life soon as my wife has MS. But as long as I can keep my tank, I will. I have many hobbies but fish allows me to do something in this hobby any time of the day and I can do things for free or spend a lot of money on it. Right now my algae screen is overflowing with algae and needs cleaning. I can do it now, or next week. It doesn't matter.
My tank is certainly "not" the nicest tank on here but that was never my goal. I started a salt tank before there were any salt tanks and it is just for my pleasure. I try to make it nice looking but my main focus is it's health and my curiosity. I try different sometimes radical things and if it works, it works. My lights just came on, on my brand new DIY water cooled LED fixture. It is working very well and that excites me. Inventing things is my main excitement, besides Supermodels of course.

dbl · Dec 15, 2015

In general, we have become a society of Instant Gratification. If it’s not there, we’re off to something different.

Tank2379 · Dec 15, 2015

Paul B said:
I don't find this hobby that expensive but I don't buy the things many people feel they need. I have no test kits because if I feel the need to test anything, I bring some water to a LFS and let them test it. I change water 5 or 6 times a year and feed worms and clams. I dose ice melter and baking soda which costs me maybe $5.00 a year. My fish live for their normal lifespan which may be 15 or 20 years so they are very cheap. My fish don't get sick so there is no need to buy medicines or new fish. I don't have to quarantine so I have no use for a quarantine or hospital tank. My methods are very old school because I am old. If I say I found the secret to keeping fish immune I will get laughed at. Ha Ha, I hear some of you now laughing. When people hear this they tell me I have a time bomb in my tank. You are laughing again. The time bomb is approaching 45 years old, I wonder when it will go off. I run a reverse undergravel filter. OK you can laugh again. If your tank is older, raise your hand.......Higher. There are so many things in this hobby that is just recycled opinions that it is annoying. I rarely give advice on any forums any more because of the arguments. I used to but after so many years of people disagreeing, I almost gave up, but people do PM me all the time. I did just write a book because if anyone reads the book, and disagrees with any of it, I can't hear them complain about it. I realize many people leave the hobby because their tank crashes or ich takes all their fish. There is no reason for that any more because some of us have learned the secrets and many of us just don't want to hear it. If I say something like "my fish never get sick no matter what I throw in there". People will tell me one of two things. I am either lying, senile or lucky. OK three things.

But I am very happy that this spurred some conversation. I love this stuff

So I guess everyone calls you an old Sea Turtle then?

constantflow · Dec 15, 2015

Because in order to understand anything you have to be able to read things like "Although a key attraction of the FeL model lies in its generality and relative simplicity, aspects of the process of the acquisition of iron by L. majuscula (and other organisms) are still not addressed by this model. Specifically, we do not yet know the means of acquisition of the complexed ferrous iron. We suggest that uptake is tightly coupled to dissociation of the complex such that it limits the accessibility of unchelated ferrous iron to competing processes, such as complexation by ferrozine. Assisting this process could be a low-oxygen environment at the organism’s surface, produced by the rapid reduction of oxygen to superoxide. This relatively reduced environment would favor the stabilization of ferrous iron by preventing reoxidation to the ferric form. Further work investigating aspects of the microenvironment, such as pH and oxygen concentration at the surface of the organism and within its sheath, might yield important insights into the process leading to internalization." http://aslo.org/lo/toc/vol_51/issue_4/1744.pdf

Also everything in the 21st century says something like "Specifically, we do not yet know the means of acquisition of the complexed ferrous iron."

I worked in a pet store a long time ago. There are many people who set up tanks for all kinds of different reasons. It is a little much to expect people in their 20s who are dealing with moving, college, career and other things going on to keep a tank for more than a couple of years in any one spot.

People just need to find what is good for them and their lifestyle.

Someone said it earlier. Experienced people leave forums. There is always a limit to the amount of professional information because at a certain point the knowledge becomes profitable. It is a hard hobby, difficult to understand, and real information lies buried in a mound of opinions.

Just some thoughts

stay cool Paul

srad750c · Dec 15, 2015

Knowledge, big chain stores, cost$$$....A lot of the equipment, corals and fish are way over-priced!

. But I have been doing this for 35 years, Kept SW for most of it. I have been fortunate enough to get into reefs from the very beginning, breed some FW fish for profit, worked at 2 different LFS, survived 2 hurricanes and a snow storm, it wiped out 3 beautiful tanks, it almost made me give up, but I keep going. I finally decided to go full REEF again this year

$$$, after having a SW community tank for the past 8 years, had a mysterious wipe out, still haven't given up

. Tank is in excellent health now. For me it has been a great ride, even with the heartaches, I hate to think about how much this hobby has cost me and I don't see me stopping now. I actually have plans to have a 20 tank man cave in the future, lol.