Meet my Little Reef Family

My 15 gallon Reef tank has been running for more than 2 months since I accidentally put Sprite in it. My water is now conditioned and my fishes are healthy and happy. All are eating and swimming around, grazing... and nibbling on something every time you watch them. So let me introduce you guys to my Little Reef Family.

Let me start with my Domino fish. This was one of the test fishes that I bought. I bought 2 Dominos, 2 yellow tail damsels and 2 striped damsels. 5 of them died and this Domino was the only fish who survived. He even had fin rot during his first few weeks, but he was able to survive! Thanks to the stress coat I bought! It’s hard to take a picture of him because he swims around like hell!

Next on my list are my Tomato Clowns. They are just the most interesting fish for me. Whenever I go scuba diving, I look for them and play with them. I was even once bitten by a Clark's Clown during one of my dives. It didn't hurt and I kept laughing after! A dive is not complete without seeing clowns. Because I have been in this hobby for more that 6 years now, I’ve learned to tell which one is male or female. Right now, I have a pair. The big one is the female and the small one is the male. I would have to say they are my favorite. And I will definitely cry if they get sick and die. During the storm a few weeks back, they got sick because power was out for a couple of hours. Luckily, they survived that too! Whew!

I bought 2 Blue tangs last week for Php560.00! I bought 2 because I was thinking one wouldn’t survive. But to my surprise, they are both alive and nibbling on the cabbage that I put in the tank for them. They look like twins! Just look at the picture! Aren’t they just so beautiful?

I now have a Juvenile Koran Angel. Juveniles are harder to keep because they are picky when it comes to the food they eat. I was a bit hesitant to purchase my baby Koran last week but I just fell in love with her when she started raising her dorsal fins whenever I’d put my finger in her tank in the shop. So I bought her. And I am very happy to say that she is eating and grazing around my tank like how a healthy baby Koran should be =)

Now let’s move on to the Corals that I have. Right now I have around 6 or 7 in my tank. All are stony corals. The first I bought was the Green Elegance, however it died a few weeks ago. Luckily, I was able to purchase a really rare colored Elegance, a maroon one, with yellow tips! It is just so beautiful! Take a look!

Apart from that, I also have a Bubble coral. I have 3, or 2 I think. I was able to purchase a 2 in 1 Bubble coral (meaning 2 Bubble Corals in one stone) I feed them fresh fish every 2 days and now they are soooooo big! My nephew calls it Candy! Sometimes they expand way too much they they touch the other corals (yikes!)

And lastly, I have an Anchor Coral, they are not as big as my Elegance and Bubbles, but they are just right. They expand their tentacles in the morning and retract them when I switch off the lights. I think they are the most beautiful, well, next to the Frogspawn Corals.

I was not able to take pictures of ALL of my livestock, not easy to take nice pictures actually. Will update this once I have the complete pictures. Planning my next Cartimar trip soon.

Rekindled Friendship

I’m not the type who gives up easily. I am actually known to be very patient – too patient that sometimes it’s bad for me. I recently got into a quarrel with an old friend. I’m not going to get into details but let’s just say I got fed up. I try to be politically correct whenever I talk to people, may it be friends, clients, colleagues.. and I DEFINITELY don’t shout at people when I am angry. A good friend did it to me a couple of months ago and I was so hurt that I decided not to be friends with her anymore (I know it sounds a bit immature but…hey..you don’t know the whole story) so I stopped talking to her until last Wednesday.

It was the birthday of one of our friends and she invited us to have dinner at Greenbelt. I honestly didn’t want to go because I knew M was going to be there and we weren’t talking. I have been avoiding awkward moments with her for the longest time and I’m happy to say that I have been very successful until last Wednesday. I pretty much didn’t have a choice because I haven’t seen my friend (the birthday girl) for the longest time. So I just said yes and dragged myself to Greenbelt to get it over with.

We had dinner at Kitchen, the 4 of us. I was dreading it, but when we were all seated together and each of them started talking about their lives, memories of how we were in our previous company started flooding back. We were all good friends, very close. We had a lot of fun. We were like sisters. We shared a lot of things.. our angst about our boss, our families.. and our love lives (or lack there of). I missed them.. all of them.. and M too. I was looking at the 3 of them while we were all laughing our asses off… and I couldn’t help but think…”what happened to me? Why did I prolong this negative feeling inside of me? Why did I shut her out?” I missed her.

I have been hurt plenty of times – I’ve lost count already, I just didn’t think a good friend could hurt me the way she did. But, I now realize that I have been very proud. I know for a fact that nobody is perfect. I am not perfect. I make mistakes. People I love make mistakes. G hurt me like no other guy ever did – and yet I forgive him every single time – why didn’t I forgive her?

I feel awful for letting this drag for months. I feel that I’ve wasted so much time being negative and cold hearted. I was just so down and depressed when it happened that I didn’t want to feel anything. I was so angry at the world. I didn’t want to be close to people. I didn’t want to go out. I didn’t want people to know about what was happening with me. I wanted to shut everyone out. And I did. And I thought I was doing fine until I got to spend time with them again. That night made me feel alive again. They made me feel that I am not alone and that they are there – will be there for me. I must admit I’ve forgotten how to be human because I decided to be a robot after that incident.

Let this be my way of saying sorry to you M. Forgive me for shutting you out.. and thank you to you – to you guys for bringing me back.

My little piece of happiness

Amidst all the negative things that has been happening in my life, I managed to find one thing that truly makes me happy.

People have different picker uppers. There’s shopping, drinking, travelling. I would like my picker upper to be TRAVELLING but time AND money does not allow me to do this one thing that I am so sure will make me very happy. So, I settled for something that is not as expensive as travelling but gives me the distraction and happy feeling that I so need.

I am a reef hobbyist.

This is not the first time that I’ve tried it. I’ve actually kept a reef tank 6 years ago. It all started when we included a saltwater tank in our design during our exhibit in college. I took up Interior Design in UP Diliman and one of the requirements was to design a module in Greenhills. My boyfriend (now my ex and a good friend) and I decided to design a Lanai, so we wanted the lanai to have a cozy and relaxing feeling and a friend mentioned that saltwater tanks are very relaxing, so we ordered a 200 gallon tank for our module. Of course, it turned out real nice. We got a lot of praises and compliments. We were both very proud! Lots of people would stay at our module and just watch our tank. When the exhibit was over, we had to return the glass tank to our sponsors so I watched them break the tank in front of me. It wasn’t a very pretty sight. Everything in our tank was borrowed, except for the fishes. So I bought my own tank, a smaller one, 100 gallon tank and set-up my own at home

Then something really depressing happened to me. So my friends thought that it would be best if we do a road trip to Pangagsinan, La Union and Baguio to keep my mind off my dilemma. We were gone for 5 days. We went to this secluded and private island in La Union. It was beautiful! I was taking a walk along the beach and found some blue rocks. I was in awe when I saw the rocks. I am a certified scuba diver but I have never seen a blue rock in any of my dives. So I brought a couple of the blue rocks at home and decided to put them in my tank. I was so excited! I couldn’t wait to get home and see how it would look in my tank and how the lights in my tank would affect the colors of the rock.

I got home late from Pangasinan that night so I didn’t have the energy to clean the rocks. I did it the next day before I left for work. I didn’t really have the luxury of time to enjoy watching my tank that morning. When I got home at 3am, I noticed that my fishes were still awake even when the lights were switched off. When I looked closely, they looked soooooo pale and their swimming behavior were a bit odd and after a few minutes, they were hitting the live rocks as they swam. I knew they were all dying. I was sooooo angry. Too angry at 3am in the morning that I yelled at GOD “Why must you get everything that I have?” After 6 years, all my fishes were wiped out in a matter of hours.

I was too depressed and angry that I didn’t get near my tank after that incident. I just left it running. I wasn’t even the one who took the dead fishes from the tank. Weeks went by and I still wouldn’t go near my tank. The saltwater level was almost half of the tank already and I didn’t care. Until one day, my dad just told me that he will clean my tank and keep it in our storage area. I still didn’t care. I let him do whatever he wanted to do with it. After a couple of months, my friend decided to buy my tank. I sold it to him for 5 grand. I didn’t care that I spent more than a hundred thousand for it. I just wanted to get rid of it.

Since my friend didn’t know anything about setting up reef tanks, I had to help him. We scheduled the saltwater set-up and Cartimar trip. When we got to Cartimar, the owners of the shops were surprised to see me (they already know me since I frequent the place) and I saw all the beautiful fishes again. It reminded me of how beautiful they are and how much they made me happy. So I decided to set up a tank of own again, but a smaller one this time. I bought a 15 gallon tank that I placed right beside my bed.

Now my tank is 2 month old. It is very beautiful! I can’t believe I got rid of my 100 gallon tank! The happiness my 15 gallon brings me is irreplaceable. It keeps my mind off the stress and issues that my everyday life brings me, but keeps me awake till the wee hours of the morning just because I cant get enough of watching my tomato clowns and angels.

For those of you who are interested in setting up a saltwater tank, piece of advise, be very patient. Plus, you have to invest and purchase good quality products and livestock even if they are very pricey! Don’t worry, you may have an empty pocket in the end but the joy it will bring in your life will be unfathomable. If you’re interested, leave me a message.

Hidden Reality

I have no memory of the details of my last blog nor the last time I blogged – it has been that long. Today, I have so much feelings inside of me that talking to good friends of mine is just not enough.

I deleted all of my blogs a couple of months back. The reason for this is because my friends and I were talking about blogging and why people blog. People basically blog to practice their writing, for some.. it's an outlet - like for me. But when I read every single blog I wrote, all of my entries were sad.. I'm not kidding.. EVERY SINGLE entry was depressing. And I realized that my blogs were out there, for everyone to read.. and I was thinking that maybe all these people who've read my blog think that I'm a very sad girl and I didn't want people to think that of me – at least not anymore.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to pretend like some happy girl who does not have problems or issues in life - in fact, I am quite the opposite. Most of the things that I remember about my life for the past 2 years have been very unhappy - I just don't want to announce it to the world. Since I am known (in our group) as the "sad girl", deleting all of my "sad and pathetic" entries was step 1 for me to be more positive about life and to focus on the good things (how little they may be) in life. It wasn't easy, everyday I wake up, I LITERALLY tell myself -"Cil, you're ok. You're gonna be fine" or I wouldn't listen to sad songs anymore (which was the most difficult thing to do because I thrive on sad songs). G once told me "No wonder you're sad, all the songs in your ipod are fuckin sad". I laughed about it - it was funny that time, but now that I've really thought about it, I guess it doesn't really help to listen to sad songs all the time. I tried to explain it to my friends before, that the reason why i listen to sad songs was because it makes me feel that I'm not alone. I was thinking, sad songs were written by people who were experiencing "not-so-happy" things in their lives - ergo.. SEE??? I'm not alone. But, I can't keep using that excuse forever - I had to stop.. and I did. But it's more of, I stopped listening to songs period.

Apart from that, I've stopped telling people about my so-called "sadness" and went to work, met up with friends, pretty much went on with my life with a smile on my face plus lots of stupid and witty comments that made everyone laugh - mind you -ALL THE TIME. People had no idea that when I get home, in my empty room, my sadness eats me alive.

Today I've realized that I have been living like a zombie. I wake up in the morning, I go to work, meet up with friends once in awhile, laugh here and there - and then I go home. It's the same thing everyday for the past couple of months. I am able to maintain it, up to now I think. It's easy when I have a lot of things to do in the office, so 10 to 12 hours of my day is spent on work. The problem is when I leave the office. It starts the moment I'm in the car - then I start to think about my life.. and it goes on until I get home, fix my own dinner, eat alone and go up to my room and realize that another day has passed and I am still alone - so I sit by my window, look up the sky and look for my wishing star (which I don't see anymore for the past couple of months). I sit there for hours.. just thinking, most of the time I lose track of time..

This happens to me every single day. No one knows about it (well, now you do coz you're reading this). I don't really know why I can't just shrug things off. I wish I could be like my friend Nathan, who manages to focus on the bright side most of the time. I am not depressed - i'm just not happy.

So, since I am pretending to be ok in real life, i think there's no harm in trying to be real through my blogs.