You never thought you would fail did you?

[Arabyps]

Yes. But, I have pursued learning through YouTube videos and R2R to establish and reinforce my knowledge base to minimize the risk. I am always tempted to do things too fast and have to keep myself in check. It is important to keep in mind you are keeping a natural ecosystem, and not to over react to natural developments in the tank (i.e. diatoms, algae, etc.) which with care, knowledge, anticipation and good husbandry will resolve. Also, it is important to be critical of advice as often times they contradict each other and you need to evaluate the best advice from credentialed/reliable sources. Lastly, you need to weed out the marketing hype on "cure all" products which have dubious claims.

 

[H3rm1tCr@b]

I was aware that I may have problems, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into. In a sense, I did "fail" multiple times before figuring problems out. But any good scientist is going to fail maybe thousands of times before getting it right. So every time I fail, I just found another way something doesn't work. (Don't remember who said that, maybe Thomas Edison???) Anyway, I'm so glad I didn't give up. I lost most of my invertebrates a couple months ago due to dino toxins and was about to throw in the towel. But, I kept going, and the remaining and new inverts are doing fine.

 

[biecacka]

Been doing this long enough to know that I could fail. However, my current tank was up and running smoothly for about 6 years. Recently had 2 anemones die while I was gone for the weekend. Came home to a cloudy tank, a few dead fish, and not a living coral of any sort.....so I know I still can fail!
haha

corey

 

[Yevoc]

I am keeping a chuck of ocean alive in a tiny volume of water in the midwest..... of course I though I could fail.

 

[Ulm_nano_diybudgetreef]

I'm new.. little over a year.. and No, I didn't go into this thinking I would fail, however, I didn't go into this thinking I would succeed either. I started this thinking, it is something I've always wanted to do so I might as well try. I enjoy the successes and I accept the failures.

+1

 

[BlazinNano]

Not thinking I could fail was my first failure. Everyone will fail at some aspect of this hobby. If you were 100% successful in every aspect of this hobby would it be fun and addicting? Just in every other part of or lives failure makes us a better person.

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

“Looks easy on paper”

Have those words ever been uttered by someone starting out in this hobby? There seems to be a preconceived notion that salt water is hard. We can explore that idea to the nth degree. But clearly there has to be some fable to that notion, otherwise you/I/we wouldn’t have ever started down the path, nor would we have stuck with it. What made you overlook the idea that you were going to fail before you got started?

There’s no doubt that there is a learning curve but once we’ve established a good understanding of our tanks and have fallen into a routine, is it really as easy as it looks on paper?

Thank you Jimmy @Sisterlimonpot for today's QOTD topic!

Maybe I got greedy or I don't know but I was trying to follow a number, phosphate. Didn't do my thorough homework and lost everything in tank. After many water changes, activated carbon and big protein skimmer I'm back again on top of the world, almost on top of the world. Here's one of two of my children of the sea

 

[Rudefish]

Failure was/is not an option especially when you have a 280gal tank investment. As someone said, read, read and read some more. Watched lots of Youtube and figured, yeah I got this. But I must admit that no matter how much you think you have it, wha la, it throws you a curve ball and you are fighting something that was unexpected. Here I go, researching again what just happened and what could have caused this effect. There is always something to learn to minimize the notion of failure and to not fail, patience and perseverance but be practiced.