So not really an update but I wanted to share some thoughts with everyone. As many of you know who have been following along I've been resisting the urge to rush through this build due to my wedding coming up in 2 months. I read this site everyday and happened to come across a article written by
@Scott Fellman. In this article he wrote about patience and how incredibly important it is to our hobby. We all know this hobby takes time and knowledge to bring your tank to life and have it thrive, but Scott was talking about how this is so important because in today's world the forums are flooded with people who expect to have there tanks looking like a mature coral reef in just a few months and we all know this leads to problems. My first time around in the hobby about 5 years ago failed for me as a result of not having the patience or knowledge to grow a healthy ecosystem. Reading Scott's article opened my eyes and I thought to myself my wedding shouldn't be holding me back, the urge to learn and watch should be what takes the time. I want to learn how alk,MG,and Calc react together, I want to see what different lighting settings do for algae, I want to take the time a quarantine fish and observe them to see what normal habits are vs not.... and much more. Scott also talked about how there so ,any great build threads out there but many more build threads that start with the mature reef thus giving the perception that you can have a tank like that with no issues in just a few months. He went on to say that people need to appreciate the build, and not just the physical build but the building of the ecosystem that takes place by nature! People need to be willing to document the tank "uglies" and learn to overcome these issues with out dumping chemicals into the tank.
Thank you Scott for providing valuable insight with that article. I want to take a pledge that my build thread will document the daily or weekly water test, the battles I'll have with algae, the failures and death I will likely experience at one point or another. Most of all I pledge to make my thread a place that I hope a new hobbyist can read one day and see what it really takes to get to the end game of a beautiful ecosystem. I hope his article can start a trend and bring this to light and more people feel good to share the long and potentially ugly road it takes to achieve real beauty!;)
