# The Time Has Come...



## GotCrabs (23 Oct 2015)

No, I'm not singing a Midnight Oil song... I've well and truly spat the dummy today... received my 9l bag of ADA Amazonia Soil and all plants in the mail, put half the bag of ADA into the Aqua One Horizon 60 I bought last week, sprayed the substrate with tap water to dampen it to make it easy to plant, planted Vallisneria nana, Glossostigma elatinoides, Lilaeopsis brisbanica, Hydrocotyle tripartita, Eleocharis parvula, set the filter up, Eheim 2213, put the heater in the tank, filled the tank up, plants went everywhere, couldn't hold the plants down, all Glosso kept lifting, as did the Vallisneria nana, so started to crack it over that, finally got 'em all down and where I wanted, turned the filter on, wouldn't work, so played around with it for like half an hour, still wouldn't work, long story short, a couple more things happened and I cracked it, unplugged the Eheim 2213, opened the back door and threw it out onto the back verandah, smashing it into a few pieces, grabbed the heater, threw that out the back door, grabbed all the plants and threw them into the fish tank outside, went back outside, got the filter, smashed it again and chucked it in the bin, she's f@#$ed, kept the taps though, so if anyone wants them, they are all yours, emptied the tank, tank is now sitting down the side of the house, I do not have the patience for this hobby right now and to be honest I am well and truly done.

I have the Aqua One Horizon 50 that I planted on the 1st October still in DSM mode, that can just sit there and do it's thing, I have no interest at all in touching it what so ever.

I've had a bad day, very short on patience right now and I can safely say I'm done with tanks, shrimp, fish, plants, all of it that involves water, screw it all! Catcya Pimps!


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## Ryan Thang To (23 Oct 2015)

is that really what happen


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## Martin in Holland (23 Oct 2015)

And they say having a tank is calming and relaxing....well, sometimes it ain't. 
I think all of us have been there, but I personally never smashed anything...yet...


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## GotCrabs (23 Oct 2015)

legytt said:


> is that really what happen



Yup, Eheim 2213 is now in the bin... minus the taps, this hobby over the past few months has just done nothing but do my head in.



Martin in China said:


> And they say having a tank is calming and relaxing....well, sometimes it ain't.
> I think all of us have been there, but I personally never smashed anything...yet...



Just had enough, so filter went boom, crash...


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## tim (23 Oct 2015)

Martin in China said:


> And they say having a tank is calming and relaxing....well, sometimes it ain't.
> I think all of us have been there, but I personally never smashed anything...yet...


Yep can be the most disheartening hobby, I've thought about quitting several times but I would miss having a tank despite all the hassle, sometimes good to take a break, hope your interest rekindles Gotcrabs.


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## Tim Harrison (23 Oct 2015)

With so many stunning scapes out there it's perhaps easy to become disheartened if reality doesn't live up to expectation, or if things don't go according to plan....before you know it all the joy can get sucked out of the hobby.
Take a break and reboot...


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## PARAGUAY (23 Oct 2015)

@ got crabs.Maybe your setting your standards too high and too critical of your efforts. All those lovely aquascapes what we see as Troi is saying a lot of the end results we see are the arrived at by mistakes,trial and error, gaining knowledge etc and even Amano mentioned the aquascaper try not to get disheartned() as you would losing a favourite fish) Try a simple few stems plants,java fern on wood next set up maybe. Get the Monty Python box set out in the meantime and look on the bright side still got the taps


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## Hyoscine (23 Oct 2015)

Damn, I'm sorry. I'm really hoping your 50 comes together okay.


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## Ryan Thang To (23 Oct 2015)

legytt said:


> is that really what happen


oh dear. i was once like that i setting up my first co2 tank and within a couple of week things keep going wrong. i felt like i wasted my money and time but everytime i think about it i thought about trying it a different way and youtube keeps making me want to try again. dont worry mate i hope you get back in to it. 

cheers
ryan


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## GotCrabs (23 Oct 2015)

Just had so many hassles with tanks in the past few months and just does my bloody head in hey, just want something nice to look at and keep but no, something here or there stuffs up and I'm left cracking it big time.

Ideally, I want a native Australian tank, native fish, native shrimp, native plants, also, I've found ADA Amazonia quite a pain in the butt to plant with.

Really hoping that the Aqua One 50 does well, it's just a DSM with Seiryu Stone and HC in there with ADA Amazonia, it's growing OK, planted it on the 1st this month, get's 10 hours of light a day, misted a couple times a week, thinking I might just pop it out on the table outside to get natural light.

Oh, sold the Eheim taps, haha, they are all gone now.


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## Manuel Arias (23 Oct 2015)

If something has taught me this hobby is... persistence. As mentioned above for others, the hobby can be very disheartening: Lot of hours of work, no few money and worries that can end in something very different from what you expect. However, as also mentioned, sometimes we have very high expectations when looking to work done by others, but the only way to achieve that is by hard work and experience, and sometimes a bit of luck.
Despite of that, the best thing is to focus in the fun associated to it. Do not create expectations and just try to enjoy the path leading to your goal. It is pointless to get lot of stress with this hobby, so take your time and ready yourself for the next try, which will be surely better than the last one.


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## GotCrabs (23 Oct 2015)

About two months ago, I lost all 15 of my Threadfin Rainbows, 40+ North Australian Chameleon Shrimp and 20+ Darwin Algae Shrimp in my Mr Aqua 12g Bookshelf, that's when I started to get disheartened, ended up using the tank outside as a planted out succulent tank display for Mum, she then bought me a tank because she knew how much I love native fish and shrimp, even though I was in two minds of doing the tank and the rest is history, here we are, just having non stop bad luck with all shrimp, fish, plants, tanks the past say 6 months and it just does my head in something shocking which doesn't help having chronic depression as well as recently having major surgery to my stomach and liver, all I want is a nicely displayed tank with some native fish and shrimp in it, that's all.


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## GotCrabs (23 Oct 2015)

Oh, I saw an advert earlier, someone selling a 4ft tank with filter, light, heater for $100... I was like "Hmmm, nice, but no... nope, NO!"


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## zozo (23 Oct 2015)

Sh#t happens, also in this hobby, the downside is if someting failes it mostly becomes a mess, which takes time and thinking to fix.. It's indeed a relaxing hobby if you're up to the patience it requires and work within your (tanks) cappabilities. As Troi says, take a step back, reboot and think it over... Don't aim to high, i can imagine, seeing all that beautifull stuff around and wanting that also. But its not there where it starts, this you can't have from scratch over night.

Auquascaping is a painstaking hobby, not sometimes but many times, specialy if ideas dont work out.. Definitely something you need to keep your cool with. 

For example i took almost all my HC out after 2 months, i messed it up. Swapped it with MC and it took me about 3 months to get it to carpet desently over an 15 cm x 5 cm patch in a running tank. With carefully trimming and replanting tiny cuttings carfully, every day a few at a spot far away enough to not distrub what i planted yesterday. Still strugling to get the little HC left going.

it took me 5 months to get my UG going in the opposite corner and im still not sure if it realy is.. Still after 5 months i'm looking at a rather another ugly corner im not happy with. It's not realy growing very good and also not dying, so as long there is a chance i do not give it up and see the beauty in the little progress i experience each week again. I don't give a flying figur that this is not conform the generaly accepted aquascapping formalities. Im not here with the hope to show off with a beautifull auquascape falling from above into my lap.. There for i'm here to learn to make that happen, one day. They just don't fall down from heaven, like some people can make you believe. They also had to learn this, but never showed their downfalls, only their succeses.

There is no learning curve in smashing things beyond repair and scaping the trashbin... Yes, you might think to learn you're not up to the task.. But thats not true.. You are, just don't jump straight away 3/4 up the ladder. Start easy down at the bottom. Don't feel bad about it, there is nothing wrong with it. Its only natural.. Rome also wasn't build in a day. 

Plants dont do what you want, you have to do what they want.  They want you to keep your cool and take it easy on them, they want time, tweezers and patience.


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## dw1305 (23 Oct 2015)

Hi all, 





GotCrabs said:


> wouldn't work, so played around with it for like half an hour, still wouldn't work, long story short, a couple more things happened and I cracked it, unplugged the Eheim 2213, opened the back door and threw it out onto the back verandah


 Great filters, but they can be a <"little bit difficult to prime">. 

cheers Darrel


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## sciencefiction (23 Oct 2015)

I so much understand where you are coming from.
I keep saying to myself that when the fish I currently have die, I'll never have fish again because I've had a multitude of problems over the last few years.  Fortunately or unfortunately I have fish that supposedly live to 20-50 years of age so unless I kill them accidentally, which the way it's going could happen, I still have a long way to go.


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## Tim Harrison (23 Oct 2015)

Hey stuff happens...even when you think you've got it all sown up...especially when you think you've got it all sown up 'cause you get complacent. I had to go through devastation and massive die off to get through this immediately below, to finally get to this below that...it took months and months of work and a steep learning curve to achieve..


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## sciencefiction (23 Oct 2015)

Wow, troi, that tank looks stunning.


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## zozo (24 Oct 2015)

Troi said:


> it took months and months of work and a steep learning curve to achieve..


Can't say it didn't pay off..  Proof is in the pudding!! Amazing tank!!.


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## Dylan (17 Nov 2015)

Wow that kind of progress shows great commitment and patience to what you love doing. I believe no one could be convinced that that first tank could turn out to be that good. Kudos


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## Martin in Holland (18 Nov 2015)

Persistence paid off .....looking great


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