Is this even really worth it?

The prettiest corals demand an amount of money that would feed a family of 7 in Cameroon for 6 months.  Used equipment are prone to breaking down.  Most stand and tank workmanship won't last past 7 years.  Updating bulbs, replacing sand so your tank won't crash, fish die, things have a hard time growing, hair algae, cyanobacteria, phosphate problems, floods...

Why do any of us do this?  Seriously?  Every fish store owner from Aquatica to Aquatic Dreams basically says that DIY and trying to do it cheap is a bad idea.  I felt a little talked down today by one particular LFS owner.  It seems that unless you can afford the Porsche, any other kind of car is just a piece of junk and will fail on you.

Trying to maximize quality and your dollar is nigh impossible.  According to those who have bought the expensive equipment, the cheap stuff is going to fail you sooner or later.  Is this attitude some sort of twisted form of cognitive dissonance, or the truth?

Ugh.  This bugs me.  I feel like I can't afford to do diddly.  I can afford to put a kenya tree in a bucket and that's about it.  Am I the only one, or are you guys all just rolling in riches and carefree problem free lives?




PS - Anyone who tries to tell me to deal with it will deal with my elite hacking skills...    Just let me have my pity party and if you don't have anything constructive to say, just stay out of it.

Edited by chris.rogers - April 05 2008 at 3:27pm

This hobby is challenging and rewarding too. It is also an expensive hobby even if you are good at D.I.Y. I think any hobby that is easy to master will not keep your interest for long. I hope you hang in there. I too have been frustrated at times (like now) but I also find the hobby rewarding at at time relaxing.

I'm sorry, but I disagree, and Ryan at Aquatic Dreams will side with me on this: I've used the calcium reactor I presented on for 8 months with wonderful success. It's totally DIY, and Lyscer uses the same design with great success.

DIY parts such as calcium reactors work great, if they're done right. I know people that have great success with DIY skimmers.

Unfortunately this hobby is geared towards cataclysmic  

failures, Thats how most of us get good deals on used equipment, something goes wrong and pushes someone over the edge an they nearly give everything away, then all of us "vultures" swoop in....

From what I've seen personally, most people with the nicest tanks are engineers, CEO's (two guys here in columbus have 500 gallon tanks that will blow you away, but I guarantee they have $25,000+ more like 50k in them) software developers, IT guys etc, generally to have a nice tank you have to throw a lot of money at the hobby.....High end equipment, high end controllers etc.... They are still prone to a crash and it normally does happen through too fast/frequent stocking, but they have the money that is expendable to keep going.... This hobby is sort of a control thing, you create an artificial biotopic environment in which you are in control of all aspects of the life within, thats why its addicting yet heartbreaking when you fail....

We are dirt poor compared to most in this hobby, but we find good deals, we sell what we don't need, we trade, we frag, we breed etc, honestly we could realistically only afford a 55 gallon but somehow we have over 1,200 gallons of salt water tanks.
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I love to disprove that notion, To me the biggest source of pride in this hobby is from the things that I do build myself.  I've used DIY or retrofitted skimmers, retro light setups, DIY kalk and Ca reactors etc.  Saying a cheap skimmer is going to fail is BS, the only thing on skimmer that can really feasibly fail is the pump which is a max of $100 to fix and upgrade with a better pump.  Using used tanks and equipment is like driving a used car some people can have them for ten years and have nothing go wrong and others are constantly headaches. 

This hobby is always evolving and honestly much of the innovation has come from hair brained DIY'ers like myself, just peruse Reef central and you'll be amazed, the octopus Pro skimmer I was referring to was all developed by DIY's on RC, then coralvue swooped in and made the design, did they develop it? NO, but they sure capitalized on it.

The end result is that education is free, thats right free.  Spend time researching so you can be more knowledgeable and rectify things in your own mind.  My biggest advice to anyone is to research all aspects of this hobby before you jump in.

Even crystal and I are constantly going through ups and downs in this hobby.  Two years of not losing a fish then you have a day from hell.  Most of the time its so stressful you don't feel like you can leave the house for a vacation after hearing about all the horror stories.  We lost our achilles tang and mature mated pair of pink skunks when she left for one day to go up to SLC, everything had been fine and one monster ICH outbreak in 24 hours nearly devastated all of the fish.  Why?....... it happens there are always ups and downs.

I'm a bit A.D.D. so I constantly have 20 projects going on at once, but this hobby for some reason is the most addicting one I"ve ever had, its challenging but rewarding at the same time, I have thoughts of selling everything and being done with it all the time, but then how would I waste all of my time?  If you get into the hobby heavy just realize that your social life and pocket book are going down the toilet....

chris.rogers wrote: I'd like to disagree too, Corey, but what does a guy with no experience do?

Corey Price wrote: The hard way to have a nice tank is to start simple, have patience and provide constant care.

Well, I should qualify that statement...  He was probably a decent guy to a lot of people on this board, but he rubbed me the wrong way.

We have DIY MH that are great and a lowest possible end protein skimmer that is terrible.  (I have to unplug it to restart it every few hours).  I think if you buy low-end stuff you need to be a little more prepared for trouble than if you spend mucho dollars. However, sometimes it is worth it.  If you DIY then if a problem comes up you already know how to fix it right?  For Mark the DIY is what endears him to the hobby in the first place.  I am like "Look what I bought!"  He is like "Look what I made!" and we are both just as happy. To each his own but I can say mine takes a ton less time lol. 

Here is my 2.

The bottom line is this. Is it worth it? Thats completely up to you...Is It?