clearing my soul ( please read and comment)

[Dmac2000ws]

Hello fellow reefers this is my first post so bear with me. I have been in the hobby for 5 years (saltwater ) 2 years (freshwater) and i have read so many post and gaining so much insight without ever leaving a thank you or even adding a comment so to all i apologize. Now a quick background I have been in the Army for 13 years and just retired in 2014 I'm 43 years old. Now i set my first saltwater tank up in 2009 and i just had some damsels and live rock and thats was good enough for me, i was using canister filters on a 55 gallon marineland tank with the eclipse system. Well like i said that was good for me till i got orders to deploy in Oct 2010 (fast forward ) to 2012 i set up a 55 gallon reef tank with a 20 gal sump and i needed all the help i could get without sounding like a newb so i browsed so many threads till i felt i was confident enough to jump in and i did it i had a beautiful tank livestock and healthy pristine water then it happened i was injured in a motorcycle accident and medically retired 2 years later. now up until then my tank was my pride and joy a real show piece then i will admit maybe some mild PTS and depression that i was no longer in uniform set in and my tank paid for it. Now here is the thing the money i invested in my system and this hobby was ridiculous and i manually dosed aqua vitro's line faithfully but i started neglecting my tank so i bought all the things that i thought i needed to do as little to my tank as possible and when i got tired of dosing i bought an auto doser but since i couldn't really figure the auto dosing rates with aqua vitro line i went to bulk reef supply for the bulk kit and i did it and that was a rap and i kid you not i didn't do a water change for id say 18 months i had coralline algae everywhere in my 75 gal and in my 40 gal both connected to a aquaeon pro flex 3, livestock was 3 true percs, 2 exotic black ice clowns, 1 blood shrimp, 1 cleaner shrimp, 1 red dragonet, and a sail fin blend who i named old man, plenty of acans, plays, zoas, some lps, and etc. as i neglected my tank my tank flourished and i didn't understand it, coralline algae really hit up my 40 gal acrylic tank covering the front and sides but on my 75 gal just the live rock, wave makers and anything plastic then all of a sudden i had the worst bristle worm bloom and they were in both tanks so bad they didn't even hide anymore so needless to say i was even less enthused to do anything about it and that caused so many arguments with my wife because she was like you put so much money into this hobby just to let your stuff go bad but like i said my live stock was healthy and growing. THIS IS THE PART WHERE I BEAR MY SOUL COMMUNITY me and my wife moved to a four bedroom house on post just two blocks over from where we originally stayed and i knew i would have to break my tank down and i dreaded it but i told my livestock i was sorry and if they just bared with me i promised not to leave them in such dire conditions again i was feeling happy again so i tore my tank down, cleaned all my equipment in the process and set my tank back up, well between 2 days none of my livestock made it but my coral did but i had to kill some of those off because they were infested with aphasia ( i forgot to include that earlier) but I'm sorry i did that i neglected my tank in which i have invested well over $8000 dollars but I'm here to say i will never let that happen again so please community comment as you will but i will now be an active participant and i welcome all comments bad or good but i have a new found vigor for this hobby and i will take what i have learned to make the best reef tank i can, oh real quick a lot of my depression started when my wife got orders to go to hawaii in 2013 and i knew i couldn't reef there so i was really upset and things spiraled from there. well i hope this wasn't too long i will post pics of what my tank used to look like and what it looks like now. well thanks for reading and i look forward to being active at reef central

[sde1500]

Welcome. And good luck on the restart! May I make a recommendation? That was a huge block of text. Breaking it out into a few paragraphs would make that a whole lot easier to read.

[toothybugs]

Dude. Breathe. I'm reading silently in my head and I'm still out of breath.

I got 4 words from the end of the first line before looking for periods and skipping to the capital text. I found 3 and may have spotted a 4th one but couldn't confirm it.

Congrats on the restart though and welcome to the group.

[ucdcrew]

Enjoy your tank. Sometimes things happen that we cannot control. Do the best you can, but don't expect perfection. As a cautionary tale - use your tank as a form of relaxation, do not let it become another source of anxiety.

[joshky]

I would say everyone has their passion for the hobby tested at one point or another, when you lose your interest you have to find another way to reinvigorate it. For some it's a new piece of equipment, others a new piece of coral or fish, and for you it may have been a bristleworm trap and a good cleaning of detritus. (prior to the move)

[hotelbravo]

welcome to reef central, its good to hear your going to come back to the hobby with that much commitment. im sorry to hear about your medical retirement i myself am military and idk what i would do if i was forced to retire or be medically discharged. and whats also a bit scary to me is pcsing as i have not pcs'd since i started my tank.
its sucks about the die off that happened when you cleaned your tank. if i read that correctly the clowns died after you cleaned you tank. if you used the old sand and tried cleaning it up chances are you stirred up a highly toxic level of compounds within the sandbed that build up after time. its a general rule to either never stir up your sandbed or stir it up very frequently in water changes so no toxic level cannot be reached. and in the future if you have an aptaisia outbreak perhaps try a fish or shrimp that would eat the aptaisia and save the coral or rock from being tossed out. some fish that eat aptaisia are copperband butterfly, matted filefish, and a few others i forgot. ive had great luck with peppermint shrimp eating every single aptaisia in my tank.

as for the bristleworms i would not take any out of your system. they are highly beneficial clean up crew that can get to areas of your tank where not many others can. if they are in great numbers that means there is an abundance of food. if you reduce the feeding of your tank then they will inturn reduce their numbers on their own.

[OrQidz]

Hi! First, thanks for your service! Sorry you had to get medically discharged. Sounds like a lot of stuff going on in your life so don't beat yourself up about the tank. Just go slow, and remember it's to enjoy. I like to just browse pics of tanks when I'm feeling stuck. Kind of gets me excited and in a better mindset for where I want to get with my tank. Good luck with it and have fun!