How to Make Reefkeeping Fun Again

With the start of the New Year, we all make resolutions of one kind or another. It may be to lose weight or woke out or drink less or eat better. For those of you who have watched my videos, especially the recent ones, or watched my talks or interviews, or read my articles hopefully one thing has come through that I have stressed: it is time to make the hobby fun again. This is now my 40^th year having a reef tank, and if I did not have fun doing this, I definitely would not still be doing it.

Making friends is one of the best aspects of the hobby.

Sadly, as I talk and interact and just watch others in the hobby, I see fewer and fewer individuals actually having fun and enjoying the hobby. This is sad, as unlike the early days of the hobby when we could barely keep things alive, today it is now possible to keep virtually anything alive, so for this reason alone the hobby should be more fun. Whatever the reason, it is time to start having fun in the hobby again. I realize that fun has to be organic and spontaneous, and that you can’t force things to be contrived fun. Nor is everything fun for everyone, but hopefully, in the ideas below, you will find enough fun things that will help make the hobby be more fun to you than it has been recently.

Develop friendships

The first way to make the hobby more fun is to develop friendships in the hobby. I have been very fortunate because I now have some friends who have been my friends due to the hobby for 20 and 30+ years. I realize that it is now more difficult to make friends in general, but having something in common like this hobby does make it easier to develop friendships. Having good friends in the hobby makes it more fun for a number of reasons. First, it gives you someone to bounce ideas off and to compare notes with.

All of us are tinkerers and experimenters to some degree and having someone to discuss them with can help. Often, they can tell that they have already tried something or know someone who has and in this way can help you reduce costly mistakes or not try to reinvent the wheel. Friends are also great in that they are usually more than happy to bank corals for you and vice versa. In this way, you can often share the wealth without having to spend any money, which is always good. These friends can be virtual in that you can meet and chat online and they can be virtually anywhere.

Going to shows or frag swaps is another way to add to the fun side of the hobby.

During COVID I had discussions with friends in over 50 countries, some of which I never thought of as countries even having a reefing community. Even better, when there is a show or swap this can provide you with the opportunity to meet and hang out. While the talks at these meetings often provide a wealth of information the talks at the bar afterward, where ideas are really shared often surpass these.

Find a mentor

In addition to finding and making friends in the hobby, it can also be more fun, especially when you are starting out to find a mentor. This mentor is simply someone who has been in the hobby longer and is willing to share their knowledge and expertise and reduce your need for trial and error. Having someone to talk to who you trust and who looks out for you can really help make the hobby more fun, which is usually not the case when you are starting out. A mentor can also help you in making decisions in that there is not one perfect way to do this hobby, but there are better ways and at the very least they can point you in the right direction.

And when you go bring the family and make it fun for them too.

Having friends and hopefully a mentor provides another fun aspect of the hobby that has become neglected since the internet age and especially since COVID, and that is viewing other people’s tanks. While everyone posts shots of their tanks online today, seeing a tank in person is still the only way to do a tank justice. Seeing how it was laid out and how corals were chosen and placed in person is far different from seeing two-dimensional pictures online. It also allows for questions to be asked as they come up as a result of looking at the tank and in my experience this is better than asking them online.

Go to reef shows

This leads to some other ways to add more fun to the hobby and that is by going to reef shows or swaps or by joining a local society. In the early years of the hobby local societies were one of the main ways that new information was shared among the hobby. It is also a good place to meet like-minded individuals and make friends. These societies not only are a source of information, but they also encourage sharing corals among their members, which is another way of making friends. They are usually informal and non-judgmental, so if you are just starting out most members go out of their way to be helpful.

And just by reducing one’s stress, they can help to make the hobby more fun. Similarly, going to shows like ReefStock, Reefapalooza, MACNA or local frag swaps is a great way to see what is out there. These shows are also often a reflection of what is hot in the hobby as well as where things might be going. They also provide an opportunity to again hang out with friends and just enjoy the good atmosphere this hobby generates.

If the complexity of the hobby keeps it from being fun make things simpler.

When you do go to the shows or swaps, it is more fun if you bring your family with you. I realize that for many of us, this hobby is a one-person endeavor, however, I have found that when you get the family involved, they can make it more fun. Obviously if you buy a $500 frag when you are struggling to put gas in your car might not lead to a fun exchange with your significant other, but if you make it about the experience and not just buying stuff, your family will appreciate it and it should be more fun.

There are also generally other partners there who do not share the passion of their partner for the hobby, so this is an opportunity for your partner to make friends as well. While at the show, try to do things with your family outside of the show as well. Many shows are held in fun places, so while there enjoy the sites with the family. If they have fun, they will usually allow you to have more fun too, and that is what this hobby should be about.

Take a road trip

And while shows or shops can be big family excursions, there is also a simpler and fun way to enjoy the hobby with family and friends and that is via the road trip. Now that we can purchase anything we need online or see a tank online the desire to get in the car and visit and shop or other hobbyist has been greatly diminished. This is unfortunate in that some of the most fun trips I have taken in the last 40 years were traveling to a distant locale with a car full of fellow reefers or just Sanjay and talking about the hobby the entire time.

Simplify

By this I mean, that if you have three tanks and are stressed, simplifying things by going to two or one tank may make the hobby more fun. You can also simplify things by making them easier to do. Anything that is easier to do will be done more often and if one is not worrying about having to do it, this too can make the hobby more fun. Having to do complicated things is generally less fun than doing simple things, so make things simple.

As well as simplifying things you can also make the hobby more fun by reducing the worry about expense. This is not an inexpensive hobby, but it does not have to be crazy expensive. A tank can be beautiful without the most expensive equipment, corals, or fish. If this aspect of the hobby is taking away your fun then you need to reduce or eliminate it. The hobby would be more fun if people stopped thinking about buying an expensive coral so they could frag it to recoup their cost.

The hobby becomes more fun when you can simply sit back and look at the tank for a while and not just a quick look.

I always found it was more fun to get a coral, not even a named one, growing it and seeing what it turned into. In this regard, I think a lot of us would be having more fun if we simply remembered why we got into the hobby in the first place. I know of very few hobbyists who got into the hobby to get rich. I know of even fewer who actually got rich as a result. Allowing the hobby to provide us with a way to relax and have fun is why most of us got into the hobby as well as the challenge that keeping corals provides. Allowing this to be the case should provide more than enough fun for most of us.

Hopefully, some of these ideas will help you get back into having fun in the hobby. It will not be an explosion into your consciousness but instead will be a gradual realization that you are enjoying things again and that the hobby is living up to what it was supposed to be. This will manifest itself when you once again derive pleasure from simply sitting back and looking at your tank for fifteen or thirty minutes without worrying about something you need to do in the tank.

Sadly when talking with many of my friends I rarely hear about how they are enjoying just sitting down and looking at their beautiful tanks and relaxing. Until we get back to this point, the hobby will not be as much fun as it should be.

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

Michael Paletta

Michael Paletta has been keeping marine tanks since 1980 and reef tanks since the mid-1980s. During the past 40 years, he has written over 370 articles on reef tanks, marine fish, and invertebrates for both the US and Europe. His first book “The Modern Marine Aquarium” simplified marine fishkeeping for beginning hobbyists while at the same time incorporating advances that had been made due to reef keeping. His second book “Ultimate Marine Aquariums” illustrates how far the hobby had advanced during its first 15 years.