What's The Hardest Part For You In Reef keeping? How will you fix it.

[reefsaver]

I would love to hear about other people and their perspective or subjective opinion on what they think has been the hardest part of Reef keeping for them.
Maybe it's the money, maybe it's the endless learning curve as we aren't all professional chemists or marine biologists.
Maybe it's the casualties you've taken throughout your experience or a combination, or the monotany of maintenance.
Some of these things can be hard and maybe at times you can struggle to deal with them.
It would be nice to know how you plan on moving forward to make this part of the Hobby easier for yourself.

For me personally, losing livestock of any kind really burns and hurts. It hurts so much that I want to create the most ideal possible conditions, and test my water twice a day if I can, chase the rainbow reef and expand my system with a new tank, that I will drill myself and add a Bean Animal Overflow to. It's really my dream.

 

[jayala12]

Spending money I don’t have sometimes. I can’t fix it because I’m an addict.

 

[Reef Puncher]

1.) invaders. from dinos to cyano to vermetid to aiptasia to pineapple sponge infestation, i feel like everything is coming after my corals.
2.) keeping stable nitrates/phosphates. its either too low or too high and im always trying to get it to stay the same.

 

[Formulator]

Others mentioned already but mine are also chasing nitrate and phosphate levels, and spending way too much money. I’m an addict for sure…

 

[ryanjohn1]

Must add more sps!

 

[StewL6]

Learning my water both the RO/DI part and the mix station/ tank water part. And dealing with pests both the planning stage and recovery stage. The water part is the longer I have been in the hobby the more annal I have become with my RO/DI and mix station I now have five carbon blocks plus low micron sediment filters before RO membrane change the membrane yearly . The pest is researching the plan to deal with the pest conducting the plan and recovery from the plan. Sometimes the recovery from the plan is just as nerve recking as getting rid of the pest.

 

[bakbay]

I was chasing Alk for many years and I’ve tried 2-parts, kalk, All 4 Reef, etc but failed miserably! All my tanks now have calcium reactors so params are super stable! Like others have mentioned, I’ve learned to stop adjusting params to “fix” one coral.

Hardest part for me in this hobby nowadays is actually finding TIME. Granted that I’ve automated many chores, including not doing WCs. However, between work & life, I don’t have time to enjoy the tanks anymore. I don’t know how to “fix” this problem yet so I’m all ears. In the meantime, I just need to pace myself… sorry for the rant.

 

[doodledreads]

Problem: Denial.
Fix: None, see above.

 

[Cichlid Dad]

Getting into my money bags. Dang they can be tight.

Really thought, I already have a full tank and have a hard time not buying more coral.

 

[EricR]

Hardest part:
- Setup simple tank and like it
- No problems with little effort
- Something crops up, deal with it
- Streaks of auto-pilot and all good = confidence
- Eventually something new and unexpected happens = just deal with it
- Getting lazy and less motivated to deal with stuff <-- herein lies MY problem

How will I fix it?
No idea.
Just hope for the best?