murphs_reef 92G - retired, thanks guys

[Lebowski_]

I wish this site would merge with Humble Fish. Both have some really great members, similar vibe of being casual and friendly, not vendor focused, etc. Both could use a bit more activity to battle with Instagram and R2R, which I think have some good sides but in general are both bad for the hobby as a whole.

[ml86743]

Murph this tank is SICK! 

[Murphs_Reef]

7 hours ago, ml86743 said:

Murph this tank is SICK! 

Thanks brother 🙌🏻

[Murphs_Reef]

It's that time of night and all I can see is 🤩🤩

 

[Pjanssen]

On 8/28/2023 at 4:19 PM, Lebowski_ said:

I wish this site would merge with Humble Fish. Both have some really great members, similar vibe of being casual and friendly, not vendor focused, etc. Both could use a bit more activity to battle with Instagram and R2R, which I think have some good sides but in general are both bad for the hobby as a whole.

I never heard of humble fish, I'll check it out. I feel bad that I don't participate much anymore, I use to really enjoy the camaraderie, and still do on a much smaller scale. Mostly I'm bored with my tank and don't have the energy or the funds to fix it, so other than regular maintenance and battling hair and bubble algae there's not much to talk about. I agree that contests and TOTM help to keep reefers motivated.

 

Anyway, Murph, the tank is looking great. Have you defeated the Aiptasia?

[Snow_Phoenix]

On 8/31/2023 at 12:28 PM, Murphs_Reef said:

It's that time of night and all I can see is 🤩🤩

 

It looks gorgeous, Murph! 🌺

[Murphs_Reef]

2 hours ago, Pjanssen said:

I never heard of humble fish, I'll check it out. I feel bad that I don't participate much anymore, I use to really enjoy the camaraderie, and still do on a much smaller scale. Mostly I'm bored with my tank and don't have the energy or the funds to fix it, so other than regular maintenance and battling hair and bubble algae there's not much to talk about. I agree that contests and TOTM help to keep reefers motivated.

 

Anyway, Murph, the tank is looking great. Have you defeated the Aiptasia?

Thanks Penny, yeah it's getting very expensive now. Even chromis are £6 a fish now.. that must be about $7 or so.. terrible.  No the Aiptasia are still around, a few less but it's a ticking time bomb waiting to go off. 😱

 

2 hours ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

It looks gorgeous, Murph! 🌺

Thanks Snow... I've really nailed down maintenance lately to try and hit the Aiptasia. But I'm still not content with it.. I really want to get more of the micro animals in there, brittle stars etc etc.. the amount of chemical I dose seems to have knocked the micro out..  I'm Dosing 8 trace and 3 macro as well as 2 part.... 

[Lebowski_]

Lookin good homie!!!

[banasophia]

Looks fantastic! Great mix of colors and types of corals. 

[banasophia]

On 8/28/2023 at 1:19 PM, Lebowski_ said:

I wish this site would merge with Humble Fish. Both have some really great members, similar vibe of being casual and friendly, not vendor focused, etc. Both could use a bit more activity to battle with Instagram and R2R, which I think have some good sides but in general are both bad for the hobby as a whole.

I really like HumbleFish and his site as well, and they are so helpful when you need help with fish disease. What makes you say R2R and IG are bad though? I really like IG myself... especially for sharing photos... this is such a visual hobby that it seems like a great fit to be able to see more people's tanks and enjoy what they've created. 

[A.m.P]

On 8/28/2023 at 11:18 AM, Lebowski_ said:

I stopped using R2R lately after learning a bit about how the site is run. I guess they sensor a lot of negativity if it affects sponsors. There's also a whole story about a conflict re: LGBT, some say because rev (the owner, a Reverend) is against LGBT. I have never seen that personally, but can't speak for others. The general feeling from a lot of longer time members seems to be that it's essentially business that puts vendors over members. I don't have any personal issues with rev and have talked with him a couple times, so it's hard to judge what's true and what's just a spurned previous member who is angry and is cooking up a conflict.

 

Not sure how much of that is true, but I do feel there is a very commercial/corporate vibe, so I stick to Nano-Reef, Humble Fish and my local group's chat.

 

However, enough with the negativity - the tank looks great 🙂 Those zoas really bounced back nicely.

 

4 minutes ago, banasophia said:

I really like HumbleFish and his site as well, and they are so helpful when you need help with fish disease. What makes you say R2R and IG are bad though? I really like IG myself... especially for sharing photos... this is such a visual hobby that it seems like a great fit to be able to see more people's tanks and enjoy what they've created. 

@ R@R Kind of toxic/competitive "Race-to-the-bottom" with allot of social media elitism, they also tend to just shut threads down entirely or even delete them when they're negative towards a big brand or sponsor.
Other times they'll close them with a passive aggressive "this isn't an appropriate review or the right place for this" type of comment. 
It's a bit bizarre and definitely feels very "corporate", everything is fine -- whitewashy.

Apparently the blowout from the LGBT thing was heated enough -and personal enough- to cause a decent number of older users, including humblefish, to abandon the platform entirely as well.


IG is the typical social media problem, everyone shows off gear, "high end" corals, and perfectly manicured tanks which makes normal people doing the right thing feel worse about their own; and then it encourages more and more people to do the same in the pursuit of "influencership".

Both really an odd feel to them for my taste.

[mcarroll]

1 hour ago, A.m.P said:

"influencership".

I love the term.  😄 

[banasophia]

2 hours ago, A.m.P said:

Apparently the blowout from the LGBT thing was heated enough -and personal enough- to cause a decent number of older users, including humblefish, to abandon the platform entirely as well.

What was the LGBT thing? I vaguely recall hearing something about it, but can't remember what it was... 

 

 

I see what you're saying about IG, but I guess I just look at it in a different way. I think it's fun to influence each other, learn about and from each other's setups... one can definitely connect with a lot more people there and I enjoy commenting on people's posts and getting to know them like a community. I just don't follow the people that I think are jerks. 

 

Maybe because I met a lot of the "influencers" in person at Reefapalooza and found that they were all really nice regular people, seeing their tanks and interacting with them seems fun to me. I haven't been on IG much lately because I'm feeling like I'm spread a bit thin doing a bunch of different things at once, but I still like to post and check out people's updates from time to time.

[Snow_Phoenix]

I actually use IG simply to share pics with others. Whether there's anyone out there liking/commenting on them or not doesn't truly affect me (unless it's a troll or weirdo - then that can be hurtful). NR has been silent lately. It used to be such a vibrant place with so many different journal threads being updated constantly, a lot of chatter/advice/opinions. I'm slowly finding myself retreating from NR as well - nowadays, I only post on here to keep my journal threads going so that I can track back on what I've done with my tanks. 😕

 

Actual engagement has definitely dipped, unfortunately. 😢

 

I'm not too keen over the concept of influencers in any sphere in general, but that's just me. I don't hate/dislike them, but I don't really admire them either - mostly because I see regular people with regular lives simply uploading interesting pics online. I admit that some of the commentary can be hilarious though, and that does make me laugh sometimes. 😅

Otherwise, I just prefer avoiding using the term 'influencer' as a whole. That Reefapalooza conference does sound nice. Perhaps one day, if I can save up and am healthy enough, I'll try to make an effort to go. Would be interesting to meet other reefers overseas and find out how they reef. 🙂

 

 

[Lebowski_]

Oh boy, I am so sorry @Murphs_Reef this is my bad!

 

@A.m.P and @Snow_Phoenix hit the nail on the head for me on most points. With R2R, they sensor comments about vendors and are more of less a business first, forum second. It's still a good place and Rev runs it well, but I already work in a corporate environment, so it's a little overwhelming for me lol. On IG, I just think it's a toxic place in general full of unrealistic tanks with too much flexing and shilling for sponsership. The entire thing feels like a giant ad for me. I follow a few more down to earth people but it's hard to escape the general shithousery. I like Nano-Reef and Humble.Fish because I feel like I am hanging out with regular down to earth folks with budgets.

[Murphs_Reef]

9 hours ago, Lebowski_ said:

Oh boy, I am so sorry @Murphs_Reef this is my bad!

 

@A.m.P and @Snow_Phoenix hit the nail on the head for me on most points. With R2R, they sensor comments about vendors and are more of less a business first, forum second. It's still a good place and Rev runs it well, but I already work in a corporate environment, so it's a little overwhelming for me lol. On IG, I just think it's a toxic place in general full of unrealistic tanks with too much flexing and shilling for sponsership. The entire thing feels like a giant ad for me. I follow a few more down to earth people but it's hard to escape the general shithousery. I like Nano-Reef and Humble.Fish because I feel like I am hanging out with regular down to earth folks with budgets.

All good mate. Good to see some activity going on here.. all positive 

[Murphs_Reef]

Ah man just been having a look at my cuc... There isn't much left... just noticed a few turbo shells freshly emptied.. 

 

Once had a population of over 60.snails now can't count 10... Time to go shopping 

[seabass]

👍 That reminds me, I have to buy more snails too.

[Murphs_Reef]

Excuse the lights.. SPS is going well. 

 

Definitely need to pick up some cuc at the weekend but I'm done buying coral, gonna let this lot grow out.. not too much rock left anyway 

 

 

[banasophia]

Beautiful 🤩 

 

What are you thinking of for CUC?

[Murphs_Reef]

1 hour ago, banasophia said:

Beautiful 🤩 

 

What are you thinking of for CUC?

Thanks . More snails turbos and ceriths are my go to really.. might get another sand sifting star and a couple blue legged hermits (the big buggers) cause all my stars and hermits are long gone.. 

[Murphs_Reef]

Still never got CUC... rather another 5 Chromis to bulk back out to 12. 

 

Accidental birdsnest frag. Wanted to chip a few branches off because it was getting in the way of one of the forest fire Montis and ended up snapping the whole thing off.. it's about a 3 to 4 inch across piece... mind it was itself an accidental frag a few months back..

So now it will live on the same bed.... 

[Murphs_Reef]

Good weekend ...won some redsea flipflops and a glass thermometer in a tombola.. and installed a new DD Ocean breeze fan connected to the thermo control and a new jump guard as the old one was starting to look naff. 

 

 

[Elizabeth94]

You tanks is lovely. Packed with corals! 

[Murphs_Reef]

So although you can't see them in my pictures, the Aiptasia issue is beyond control by a few miles.. 

I've toyed with the idea of various fish but didn't push any buttons, all have downsides and none are a guarantee....

I do have one confirmed Aiptasia controller in the sump. My filefish. The only issue with him is that he is also a confirmed zoa controller. 

 

The options as I see them are: 

1. Empty the tank and get new rock in there, and still run the risk of bringing Aiptasia back in off coral I have cleaned.

 

2. Accept the zoas are going to get hit and put the filefish to work. 

 

I do have a lot of zoas that although grown off there original plugs, the plugs themselves can easily be cut out of the reef.. so I won't loose everything. These can go into the sump for a few months under the ai prime 16hd. 

 

The SPS, LPS and mushroom tests I have done with the filefish have been fine. No nipping or eating them so I'm pretty confident that he will stick to zoas and Aiptasia in the display.. 

 

Before that I'll hit them with vinegar one last time next weekend to see if I can at least reduce the population of Aiptasia.. failing that.. filefish time. 

 

Oh also I've just noticed that I didn't actually stop using nanoreef in the end.. 

 👍🏼