A Slice of Reef Imagined

Tom Giddens · Nov 12, 2020

Sorry to hear that I hope your wife and business has speedy recovery

tripdad · Nov 22, 2020

Tom Giddens said:
Any new pics and updates?

Ok, so I promised an update. In March when all this C19 stuff got out of hand my company made drastic personnel cuts and I ended up working alone. I restore antique cars for a living so this is darn near impossible to do and keep on schedule for a single person. So my hours went up, pay went down and I'm still playing catch up all these months later. Then in early May my wife felt odd one morning, ended up at the ER room. Of coarse I was not allowed in with her, had to drop her at the door and then go wait in the car in the parking lot. Hours later, long hours, I get a call telling me she is suffering heart failure and is in serious condition. After a procedure and a week in the hospital she came home. She was unable to do much physically and with C19 she certainly could not go out into the world. This left me with all the daily life task to do as well as my crazy work load. Something had to give and it ended up being tank maintenance. After the summer and into October I just could not keep up with the tanks and unfortunately a small aptasia problem became a nightmare. So I decided a reset was the most expedient solution. In the middle of October I moved all livestock I could get aptasia free into my empty 65 rimless. I lost most of my acros save for three peices. All the LPS survived and I was able to "clean" about half the zoanthid colonies or at least get a clean frag off them. All the fish except one chromis made the move as well. I'll post a pic below of the 65gal now. Still shaking off some of the uglies from the start up and two of the acros took a huge hit but overall it's doing well. Added sand today finally after sanitizing it for a while to get rid of any aptasia or other pest. So as of today my wife is almost fully recovered, the "new" tank is ok and I now hate grocery shopping more than doing laundry, hah! Anyway, we are lucky as none of our kids have been seriously ill or myself. My 98 year old mother in law had the C19 but was completely asymptomatic. Go figure but we are just glad she's ok. So in the end this tank is being cleaned, sterilized and will be restarted. Thanks for following along.

tripdad · Nov 22, 2020

Tom Giddens · Nov 23, 2020

Sorry to hear that. I am glad everything is getting better for you.

tripdad · Dec 13, 2020

A few updated pics. Cleaned the glass, glued a couple new frags down. Still fighting a few new tank uglies but getting better. A few spots of coraline algae starting to show up.

Perry · Dec 13, 2020

Wow, that's too bad, but happy to hear your wife and life on the mend. Very happy to see yoy still in the hobby, considering the adversity

Subscribing and looking forward to the future.
Cheers

MidlifeCrifish · Dec 13, 2020

tripdad said:

Looks mighty purdy sir!

tripdad · Dec 13, 2020

Perry said:
Wow, that's too bad, but happy to hear your wife and life on the mend. Very happy to see yoy still in the hobby, considering the adversity Subscribing and looking forward to the future.
Cheers

MidlifeCrifish said:
Looks mighty purdy sir!

Thank you both for the kind words! It helps keep me moving ahead.

tripdad · Dec 14, 2020

Tom Giddens said:
Sorry to hear that. I am glad everything is getting better for you.

Sorry Tom, I missed this post. Thank you for your kind words.

tripdad · Dec 16, 2020

Added some new pieces.

tripdad · Dec 23, 2020

Merry Christmas! Stay safe and enjoy the holidays!

mattgsa · Dec 1, 2021

Love your tank, would love to see more recent pictures.

tripdad · Dec 1, 2021

mattgsa said:
Love your tank, would love to see more recent pictures.

Thank you! That tank has unfortunately taken a downturn currently due to health issues of my family that have taken all my spare time and then some. Tank is still running and most of the corals are still alive but it is neglected right now. I will update when I can spend a little time on it. Thanks for all the likes, I appreciate them.

Rakie · Dec 22, 2021

It's looking very happy @tripdad

tripdad · Oct 3, 2023

Sooo, someone said that God only gives you what you can handle........God must think I'm Charles Atlas, very old ref there, lol. After all the above went on and we got through it, life decided we needed to deal with the worst. Our oldest daughter passed away very suddenly 2 years ago at Christmas. I won't get into details but it was an absolute shock. As a result of her passing we are now "parents" to our 5 year old granddaughter. Everything got neglected on the hobby side for quite a while. I've had to ramp back up to getting a child up and dressed for school and dropping off and so on in my 60's. I am finally able to get back to the tanks, yes, they are still running, just in rough shape. In with all of this other tragedy I encountered a huge cyano bloom I could not beat. Turns out our new whole house water treatment system/iron filter was the cause. I am finally getting ahead of things. Also we lost some fish due to the power company coming out and changing meters without notice. Power was off for some time right as i treated for cyano with meds and the resultant low oxygen condition was too much for the bigger fish. All the small ones survived though. As did all mushrooms, Psammacora and a few gorgonians. So I will rebuild both tanks from here. I hope you and yours are safe and well! Also, thanks to Reef2Reef for a place to "hide" for a few minutes during all of life's trials.