Recently while watching an old Saturday Night Live show with my daughter, Gilda Radner as Roseanna Rosanadanna responded as she always did to Jane Curtin that “It’s always something, if it’s not one thing it’s another. Within seconds of this an alarm on one of my tanks alerted me that the temperature was at 82, so I knew it was time to make some changes.
Having these two events happen at the same time confirmed what I have been thinking for a long time: it is always something in this hobby. If it is not something breaking, needed cleaned or maintained or testing it is something else. It also made me realize what a resilient bunch we are that many of us stick with this hobby despite there seemingly always being something, usually negative going on.
As I have noted before, one of the blessings I have had of being in this hobby is that I have made a lot of long-term friends in this hobby and as friends do, we have shared many of the adventures and mis-adventures that we have had. What is funny is how many of us have had the same thing happen to us. So, since so many of us know exactly what I am talking about when I say it is always something I am going to share some of the stories and experiences that have been shared with me.
I do so to point out that none of us are perfect, or even near so, but also in the hope that when any of you have one of these experiences, and you will, you will know that you are not alone. Some of them are common, some I have only heard of once, but all of them provide insight into what this hobby takes.
第一和最常见的发生ay too often is the loss of a fish or coral for what can only be considered stupid reasons. Stupid because either we do something stupid, or because the fish are just too stupid to live. First, among these is losing a fish because it jumps out of the tank. I saw that as all of my tanks are covered, and I mean completely covered. I now use tight-fitting mesh covers that fill almost every square inch above each tank.
我做这是我除了爱所有珊瑚also addicted to wrasses and as we all know, for some reason wrasses love to jump out of the tank. I find this interested in that after being on reefs and seeing wrasses in their natural habitat I have never seen wrasse jump out of the water for any reason.
However, in the confines of a tank, and even a big tank, my wrasses seem to be constantly seek ways to become fish jerky. This behavior is so prevalent that one time while walking in front of my tank a Flame Wrasse literally jumped out as I was walking by and I caught it on the fly. This made me realize that he would do it again unless I found a means to keep him and his brethren in the water.
So this is why tight fitting covers are now employed on all tanks. However, this is not good enough, in that Despite these tight covers these fish still from time to time find the smallest spaces, seemingly smaller than they are, and fling themselves through them resulting in their crispy demise. So now I am constantly vigilant to any small cracks or spaces that may exist in the tank’s covers and cover them with plastic or PVC lest these aerial daredevils find them and exploit them to their own detriment.
However, even this is not good enough, as I said there is always something. I now on several occasions, have lost fish that jumped out in literally seconds when the cover was off for me to clean the tank, do maintenance or move corals around. It was like they were just sitting there waiting for the lid to come off so they could escape, and I think I have nice comfortable tanks for them to live in.
至少有两次，我的手机在我在坦克上工作时响了，在我转身拿起手机的那一刻，他们逃脱并承诺了空中自杀。结果，当我在坦克工作时，我不再接电话，以免我失去了另一条昂贵的鱼。毕竟，有人打电话告诉我，他们对我有一个沃尔特·迪斯尼或家庭残骸Tenuis，所以为什么要冒险。
Even worse than losing fish due to their jumping to their death is having fish simply suddenly disappear, especially when they were eating, healthy right before they suddenly vanish. From talking to people this seems to happen frequently and when it does most of us then spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to find this suddenly invisible fish.
And when I say invisible, I mean there is no rotting carcass, no skeleton or bones of any type. It’s as if the fish never existed in the tank, and despite our looking between every rock and in every space there is absolutely no sign of the fish anywhere. The most memorable case of this in my tanks happened very early in the hobby, before I kept reefs.
I had a typical 55-gallon tank decorated with dead coral skeletons and there were virtually no blind spots in the tank. The tank housed a typical assortment of fish including a very nice Radiata lionfish. I has to travel for a business trip for 3 days and my girlfriend was in charge of watching the tank.
When I came home all was good, except the Radiatia lionfish was nowhere to be found. This fish was the size of a large fist when I left, so when it died it would have disrupted the chemistry in the rest of the tank. We spent hours looking for any sign of it and found none. Even when I broke down the tank 3 months later no bones, or sign of a skeleton ever surfaced. So this got me started on realizing that in a saltwater tank it is always something.
以另一种自杀形式，出于某种原因，一些鱼类和海葵在几乎没有明显原因的几乎每个人的水箱中被磁性吸引。结果，即使在Powerhead已经进入了几个月或数年之后，我和我的朋友都有将鱼跳到电流中或被困在摄入量的螺旋桨上的经验。
To us this makes no sense and is frustrating in that we all want strong water movement, but with fish we have to make sure to keep them out of harm’s way. Even less understood is why anemones, also often after time has passed, seem to love to get shredded in the turbine-like powerheads we use.
这对我们来说是不可思议的，因为这些海葵在一个环境中似乎很高兴，因为他们长时间呆在那里，然后突然无缘无故地感到被迫搬到最近的动力头并滑入其中，尽管他们被切碎了。这样做。So for this reason I now not only keep a close eye on my tank’s anemone populations, but I also cover and place the powerheads so that access to them is as reduced as possible, but to be honest some fish still find their way into the blender any way.
其他事情发生,确认is always something is the time I was in a rush and inadvertently let the day’s dose of calcium hydroxide (kalkwasser) get dispersed via a powerhead. Despite immediately removing any of the powder from the corals once my mistake had been realized, the next day revealed what it would look like had it snowed in my tank.
不用说我不会忘记的漂白活动。说到下雪，我的爱好者已经看到并告诉我的时间足够多，在他们或我理解盐水化学之前，他们试图调整碱度/钙的水平，只是看到了看起来像冬季仙境的东西发生在他们的坦克中。
无论他们/我所做的什么都导致碳酸钙沉淀至一定程度，使我们的水箱内看起来像雪。不用说，这告诉我每当我对坦克进行任何化学调整时，都会慢慢变慢。
In addition to there always being something, my family frequently sites the adage that no act of kindness, no matter how small goes unpunished. In this regard, I have learned the hard way that at times trying to help out a friend when not planned for properly can produce bad results. What I learned came after I tried to help out a friend whose tank had fallen on hard times and was covered in algae.
Literally every rock and surface in this tank had algae growing on it of one type or another, but his fish were all doing fine. Since we realized we would need to tear it all down and basically start from scratch and this would take some time, we decided that I would house his fish in my quarantine/frag tank until his tank was ready.
This seemed like a harmless thing at the time and he had had most of these fish for five or more years so we did not see how there could be any problem. What I did not realize at the time is that most of the fish in this tank were subsisting almost exclusively on the algae that was present in this tank. So when they were introduced into my quarantine/frag tank the contents of their digestive tracts quickly made it into my tank.
Until this time I always thought that the digestive process renders most material inert. Sadly, soon after I introduced these fish I realized that this was not the case. Within days of their introduction algae of various types began to sprout up on virtually every surface. Digestion may have consumed much of the algae, but sadly the spores of these algae were not affected by the process.
结果，我很快就意识到，从那时起，当我向坦克引入一条新鱼时，我不仅需要隔离外部寄生虫，而且我还需要隔离消化道中的东西，尤其是，尤其是那是藻类，因为这些鱼的藻类花了将近两年的时间才完全消除了我的坦克。
当我试图通过握住他的巨型德拉萨蛤来帮助另一个朋友时，我也遇到了类似的问题，这是他在他的坦克重新定居时拥有了5年以上的时间。与引入藻类一样，这蛤显然带来了一些害虫。我说，随着我将其添加到坦克的3天内，我一直保持了3年以上的三个蛤lam，而在第4天，这个巨型蛤也灭了。在测试水并寻找寄生虫或其他蛤虫害虫之后，什么也没有显示出来，所以这只是另一个没有解释的东西。
Battling algae is one aspect of this hobby where it is always something. I say that as just about everyone I know has battled it in one form or another over the years. Similarly, most of us have also had the bad experience of having to battle external parasites on our fish, especially those that are newly purchased.
我意识到，我们中可能只有不到20％的人有隔离坦克，这是愚蠢的，考虑到如果/何时发生疾病爆发时，我们的珊瑚礁造成了昂贵的鱼，但我们仍然不这样做。话虽如此，我的一个朋友隔离了他所有的新鱼，但他介绍了他在隔离的鱼类中遇到的鱼，但没有任何病原体的迹象3个月。
In this case, just the simple task of catching and moving the fish from his quarantine tank, where they looked “clean”, to his show tank was enough to cause a major outbreak and infect not only the new fish, but also many of his old fish some of which he had for over 10 years. And this occurred despite his running UV, feeding garlic enriched and probiotic foods and having done the quarantine. This again shows that it is always something.
One of the stranger its always something occurred with some of my fish but then occurred in a worse way to one of my friends. Like many of us I use a gel type super glue to mount frags and to hold corals or live rocks in place.
To do so, a large gob of glue is placed on the bottom of the piece to be mounted and then it is set into place. For some reason on numerous occasions the fish in my tanks seem to think this super glue is appetizing so on some occasions when I wasn’t vigilant they bite at the gob of superglue.
On a couple of occasions, it sealed their mouths shut, so I either had to catch them and remove it, or give it some time and wait for it to drop off as over time the water reduces its stickiness. So luckily for my fish to date this has not been a traumatic experience.
However, for a friend of mine his blue tang was not so lucky. His blue tang was over 5 years old and over 7 inches in length, when it decided to pick at the super glue on the bottom of a frag that to be mounted. Like mine, this sealed its mouth and he caught it and removed the glue from its mouth.
Unfortunately, during this process, the tang had somehow managed to ingest some of the glue unbeknownst to him. Two weeks after this event the tang was dead. When he told me this I had him dissect the fish to see what was the cause. To our astonishment there was a hard piece of glue lodged in his digestive system smaller than a grain of rice.
A single bite of the glue had been enough to kill this large beautiful fish. This has not only confirmed to us that it is always something, but it has also made us be more vigilant when we are placing and gluing new frags.
由于我现在有6个坦克运行的概念，因此我总有一些东西受到了放大。设备故障，泄漏，电气问题或只是发生愚蠢的事情，尤其如此。所有这些似乎都是关于爱好的负面事情。
However, in terms of there always being something going on, I remember a story that Sanjay told me that shows that every once in a while this something can be positive. Like me, Sanjay also keeps close-fitting covers on all of his tanks. But despite this a blue hippo tang the size of the palm of his hand still managed to find a space big enough to jump out of Sanjay’s big tank.
When Sanjay found him he was pretty dried up so Sanjay did what most of us do and got ready to flush him away. However, when Sanjay placed him in the water he saw what he thought was the fish taking a breath. So he immediately took him from the bowl and and placed him in a net back in his tank.
Amazingly over the next few hours the fish kept taking in water, becameundessicated补水，保持呼吸并幸存下来。尽管如此，它几乎灭亡了5年后的唐还活着，并且没有显示出任何经历任何事情的迹象。
So in reality Sanjay really did save Dory. So while this hobby can be daunting and frustrating and there really almost always something going on, if you stick at it long enough this aspect of the hobby becomes less overwhelming. While it is always something, for the most part, you can take heart that this something is shared by most of us who have been in the hobby for any length of time.
