I need help
It’s been probably over 6 months that I’ve actually posted or been on here, it’s been nearly 6 months since I’ve done a water change, and nearly 6 months since I lost all motivation. I have adhd, so losing motivation on something makes complete sense, but losing motivation and watching your favorite coral die, watching your tank whither away shouldn’t be part of that. I’ve lost my favorite acro, my torch is nearly dead, my gonis, I have no idea where my shrooms are, I lost my favorite Duncan. And I lost that feeling of pride. There is algae everywhere, it’s not clean. And I’m not happy at myself. Everyday I start off the day saying, “today will be the day!” And it wasn’t the day. I go to bed saying “tomorrow will the day!” And turns out it wasn’t the day. I feel horrible since I got a free tank last summer, I came back from junior olympics the past February, saying only a couple more weeks and it’s finally being setup fully(meaning corals and everything are being moved), and it’s just in my room half empty. It breaks me to see my tank like this, to see a gift from somebody like this. I don’t know what to do. If anybody can help me that would be amazing. If you have anything nasty to say, don’t say it.
Thanks for listening and hope you have a nice day!!
I’m nearly tearing writing this, that’s how bad I feel
That doesn’t sound fun. I was in a similar situation recently. Let tank go for awhile had a crash and didn’t have motivation to start it over at that time from algae and aptasia. Was moving and said I’m not giving it up put too much into it so tried again with a new tank and a month I’m going great, added some new coral this week and off to a great start. Sometimes you just gotta restart and try something else to get out what you want
I love the way my tank looks, it’s not really that. It’s literally finding the movitcatikn to do anything reefing related, I sometimes completely forget to feed my tank, that’s how bad it gets
I don’t have ADHD, but almost every single person in my family/life does, so I’m used to it and working with people and their processes. My biggest preach is time management and diarizing tasks - which I do for myself. I have all the things I should be doing each day in my calendar with reminders. If I don’t get to ALL the things, I’m not mad about it, I just move it to the next day.
With tank maintenance, there can be lack of motivation, especially when I have to work late every single day, or would rather be outside with friends.
I’ve tried to designate small tasks for each day, Thursday is testing, Monday is fill up ATO reservoir, Friday is make water, Saturday early am is water change (I only do one tank per week/two to lessen the workload), Sunday is filer socks and skimmer cleaning, etc. that way it’s pieced up so there isn’t a giant wall of maintenance one day every week.
I just lost two fish to powerhead accidents while in quarantine, so I’m feeling really stupid, sad, and frustrated right now. It definitely hits the motivation when things are not running as smoothly as you envision or hope for.
I am an advocate for making your tank and maintenance a level that fits your lifestyle, this means if you are extremely busy you would be better off keeping easy, basic fish/coral and designing your maintenance plan accordingly. Baby steps. If all is going well, then you can swap things out over time.
And as someone suggested above, maybe now is not the time. If you can’t get joy from it and it’s a constant source of stress and anxiety, step back and take a break. Hobbies should be both challenging and satisfying. :)
