Does anyone else experience burnout in the hobby? Seems like I go through periods of time being very interested and excited to care and maintain the tank and other times just feeding the tank feels like a chore, even when the tank is running smoothly and the fish/corals are all healthy and growing. Anyone else? What do you do combat this?
Posted Jul 15, 2022, 2:25 PM UTC
Natural reefs take thousands of years to grow, taking some time to step back and let your tank do its thing seems to be a reasonable thing to do. I test alkalinity every other day, ph and salinity every few days and nitrates every 2 weeks, top off ato when needed. I will go through waves as well with tinkering but for the most part, it does its best when I'm not getting myself salty.
I've been doing it for over a decade and of course the level of interest has its peaks and valleys, but I always look forward to seeing my tanks.
I find that listening to reefing podcasts and checking out online communities like this can help inspire and motivate. In general, putting on a podcast makes any chore more enjoyable.
I might skip a weekly water change here or there or go a week or 2 between testing the basics, but my fish will always be fed (at the minimum some flake or pellets) and I'll be checking on things every day since that only takes a few minutes.
Then there's a few points in the year where I'll get super into testing and tinkering, but otherwise I'm just in maintenance mode as I try to let my tank grow into what I want.
I found that just having a single friend who wants pictures of my tank and weekly updates has helped a ton. I got kinda burnt out on doing water changes and maintenance during COVID. Just sharing a photo or a text keeps me on top of it after a long week, and builds my friendship. Hope this helps.
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It is like an endless circle! Haha. My experience me be different than some, because my entire set up is all home made. Its taken a few years of trial and error to get things to work correctly, or efficiently. I get super excited/obsessed when I notice that what I've built is working and can watch it in awe. But when something breaks or I discover a fix for something that requires almost starting all over to fix, it gets overwhelming and I wish I could just start over and buy something pre built that requires less worry and stress so I can just come home from work and enjoy it. Instead of tinkering with this and that all the time. But then I see a coral come back or an amazing mountain of sand the diamond has built and I'm in awe and wonder and realize that I wouldn't see these wonders if I hadn't put so much work I to it. The rewards wouldn't be so personal to me. And the interest or spark in the hobby gets re-ignited. I'm greateful to have a community like this one that keeps me going and helps me through troubles. So to that I say thank you to all of you and hope everything is going well in your lives and in your tank.
I sold all my gear because of burnout. Still enjoy seeing everyone’s on this sub tho. With work and kids there’s just no time for me to actually work on it. Got an algae problem and never really cared to fix it.. that’s when I knew it was time to move on
I realized I like setting up tanks a lot more than I like maintaining tanks. I ebb and flow in and out of the hobby.
Not really. I enjoy looking at tanks, always. Maintainence is pretty easy…feed daily, test/refill ATO/empty skimmer once a week, replace some media once a month and send an icp test.
Getting N and P under control and a good export system has made it a lot easier. I only have to clean the glass weekly
All the time. Got really back into it about 6 months ago and bought $150 worth of tests. Haven’t used a single one.
Luckily when I get bored of it, it’s still easy. Change a couple gallons every couple weeks and scrape the glass and change filter floss..
I get a decent amount of growth, and when I’m into it I’m into it
I love nano tanks for that reason. Some easy LPS and you can skip most testing and just do a water change with quality salt mix.