Does this boil down to what & where you brought your reef aquaria home from ???
Bryan
that and just good husbandry...but yes for the most part a lot of my issues have boiled down to contamination from external sources:
- cirolanid isopods - came in as hitchhikers from Tampa Bay Saltwater live rock...these f*****s latch on to your fish and slowly eat them alive...once i realized i had them, i had to run fallow for a few months, use a flashlight every single night for weeks and siphon them out one at a time...they slowly starved themselves to death after a few months until i didn't see any...same with gorilla crabs and zoa spiders, came in as hitchhikers and had to slowly hunt them until there weren't any left...that was my first test as an aquarist and i almost quit
lesson learned: inspect everything you put in your tank carefully...dip everything...if you're unsure take it out
- cyano outbreak about a year into reefing...killed practically everything...i had no idea what it was but most of this was entirely my fault - i didn't want to invest in an RODI unit...NO3 was at 40, PO4, i have no idea but i ran GFO...at a certain point when i saw everything covered in red slime i just kind of gave up...then i moved and i was able to start things over and i finally started using RODI water and buying test kits for nutrients...after the move i started stocking up again and things were looking phenomenal
lesson learned: you MUST use RODI water and get a good refractometer
- then i got infested with dinoflagellates...after losing 90% of everything and restocking then getting hit with dinos i was sure i was going to give up...i tried most of what was on the net to no luck...at this point dinos was the worst thing i've seen - you blow them off or siphon them out and an hour later they are back...i was losing coral left and right and the treatments i was trying out were also killing fish and shrimps...finally found a method that worked 3 months later and that was losing damn near everything again....this time i lost way more expensive stuff than the last but i didn't give up and i was able to save a few small acro colonies and 3 fish...my wife and i planned another move and it was at that point that i asked the wife if it was worth continuing...i was down to only a handful of corals and a few fish and i could have just called it quits, it was fun while it lasted OR i could do things really right this time, get a bigger tank, sell some organs and buy really nice stuff...she said it made me happy so go for it...so i did and got a bigger tank
lesson learned: happy wife, happy life
that and perseverance prevails...even if you're doing things right, something can still go wrong...nothing i could have done could have prevented the dino outbreak...i still don't know how i got it, it could have laid dormant in my system for all that time and it reared its ugly head at precisely the right time or it could have come in from a frag, i have no idea...i'm leaning more towards the frag from a local seller but i would have no proof
- after this last move i was able to buy new sand and almost new everything...bought an RODI unit and test kits for almost everything...started buying a ton of new stuff from live sales...i got into a brief stint with dosing things to get better colors and almost had a near crash again...i was able to correct it and after a few water changes things are back to good
lesson learned: simple is the way to go...the more equipment you put in, the more chemicals you dose, the more crap you do the more chances you have at something failing and you not knowing what exactly failed...K.I.S.S....if you are going to dose, test things first to get a baseline and test often to make sure you don't OD...if things go bad, you can always count on water changes to "reset" your water back to baseline
Sorry to hear of your losses
