Turtilinni
Community Member
My name is Jasper, I am 21 years old and I own a 75-gallon marine aquarium, with a 25-gallon sump containing as of today two clownfish and nothing else. Today was the hardest day in my eight years doing saltwater, as today the algae finally won and I found my foxface and seahare dead at the bottom of the tank. I have been giving 25% water changes while manually removing the algae for the last month, but due to an honestly bad tank scape leading to areas I could not remove the algae from, it has completely suffocated my tank to near death. I spent my morning crying, and my plan for the afternoon was to take the clownfish to my LFS and give them to the owner, followed by coming home, draining the tank, and leaving the hobby for good. If this was the extent of the issue though I would neither be posting on this thread nor this forum. In my eight years, I have dealt with mass die-offs, I have dealt with bad algae infections, I have dealt with tank mistakes and I have bought and used every terrible aquarium product on the marketplace. My point being, that solutions are not what I am looking for here, otherwise, I would have just posted this in the nuisance algae area. No, I understand what mistakes I made, and what I can do better next time. Instead, my problem is motivation. Eight years, especially being 21 is a large section of my life. While I have enjoyed my aquarium immensely, learned large volumes of information on my own, and truly grown as an individual and a fan of the hobby, I cannot keep going on my own. I do not personally know another human being who owns a saltwater aquarium, who isn't also an employee at an LFS who has both a lack of time to talk as an employee and a bias to sell you for the most expensive product and not the best one. I do not want to bother these poor employees with my advanced questions, and I am tired of being sold on snake oil, let me tell you as a teenager with only the internet to go off of, I have been sold a lot of snake oil. What I need is ideally another aquarist with just a little bit more experience than me in the hobby. Or a lot of experience, really I just need someone willing to give me some of their time. I refuse to keep this tank going on my own, it just is not working and while I can learn just barely fast enough, I do not have the mental energy to figure out every single problem in my tank without help. I just want a little bit of support honest to god. I have tried talking to other customers at the LFS, but they do not seem interested in friends as hard as I try. I went to my local aquarium society to meet people, turns out they are entirely freshwater. I know there are other saltwater fans in my city, but I cannot seem to find them hard as I try. So this is my last attempt at reaching out, trying to build a connection with another human being. I am an extroverted social guy, who loves to talk about his passion for saltwater aquariums, it is just today with such a rough morning that I am truly wavering on whether I can continue on this journey without another human being who can even understand what we do when we take care of these aquariums. I do not care if you are young or old, new or old to the hobby, an expert or a rookie, I just need people to talk to about my tank. Do you feel like the kind of person with just enough spare time to answer a question or two, take a look at progress photos and generally communicate with another person to help them in the hobby? Please PM me ASAP. I will follow any directions, spend whatever is needed, I will be your saltwater apprentice, I just need a saltwater master to learn from. As for the tank, (I will attach photos in the comments they are just on my phone), unless someone really thinks that it is salvageable, I am going to turn in my clownfish today. I am afraid that while cleaning all the rocks, and taking out so much water, the chances of survival are dropping for the clownfish. God knows those guys are as hardy as they come, but after all this suffering I am just wondering if it would be easier to turn them in, take the tank apart, and then only get it recycled and going strong when I have a fellow saltwater fan to help me plan this stuff out. Like I said at the beginning, I think a lot of my problems started with a bad tank scape, so just a little bit of that marine master wisdom would go a long way for me. I will be watching this thread closely for the next couple days, PM me or comment below if you have any questions comments or concerns, anything helps but specifically, if you think you want to really help me out PM me and I can give you ways to contact me outside of even this website. If you read this far thank you very much, I really hope I don't end up leaving this hobby I love it very much, I just wish it wasn't so lonely some days.
Thanks in advance~ Jasper the young marine aquarist
Thanks in advance~ Jasper the young marine aquarist
