Why so much bad advise?
- Thread starter Kedd
- Start date
what an interesting thread.
his happens at almost all boards,only thing one can do is for the senior,more experience reefers to correct some blatant wrong info.short of that,hard to control what ppl post. problem is most of the so called misguided info could actually be made in good faith as the one posting may have success with it.
there are too just many variables in this hobby,so for newbies is best to stay close to tried and tested guidelines.back to the point of the more senior and knowledgeable members to ensure newbies are aware of that.
end of the day,one shud gather all info from the net and try to digest them,instead of just blindly following some advices from someone u dun even know. just my 2 cents on the issue.
his happens at almost all boards,only thing one can do is for the senior,more experience reefers to correct some blatant wrong info.short of that,hard to control what ppl post. problem is most of the so called misguided info could actually be made in good faith as the one posting may have success with it.
there are too just many variables in this hobby,so for newbies is best to stay close to tried and tested guidelines.back to the point of the more senior and knowledgeable members to ensure newbies are aware of that.
end of the day,one shud gather all info from the net and try to digest them,instead of just blindly following some advices from someone u dun even know. just my 2 cents on the issue.
- Location
- Huntington
maybe we should add a spelling and grammar section to these tests as well...
just kidding
I think the badges or ranks would be a good idea. However, and I think we can all agree that there are many aspects of this hobby that are highly subject to an individuals opinion (such as what to dose and how much, DSB Vs. BB Vs. SSB, lighting setup, etc..). Without each persons individual thoughts and ideas progression in this hobby would cease (provided they are legitimate). Also, using a "curve" for the tests would ultimately defeat the purpose of them just like they did back in school.
I think the easiest way to create these tests would be to take question submissions from members and pull several from the pool to be on the actual test. The questions would need to be straight forward and leave little to no room for opinions rather than the actual science behind the hobby.
just kidding
I think the badges or ranks would be a good idea. However, and I think we can all agree that there are many aspects of this hobby that are highly subject to an individuals opinion (such as what to dose and how much, DSB Vs. BB Vs. SSB, lighting setup, etc..). Without each persons individual thoughts and ideas progression in this hobby would cease (provided they are legitimate). Also, using a "curve" for the tests would ultimately defeat the purpose of them just like they did back in school.
I think the easiest way to create these tests would be to take question submissions from members and pull several from the pool to be on the actual test. The questions would need to be straight forward and leave little to no room for opinions rather than the actual science behind the hobby.
Will the test be open book, or do I need to go to one of those Kaplan's prep classes for it
.
Honestly, this board is small enough that even being new, it hasn't taken much to see who to listen to. On other boards, it's scary what advice gets handed out, but, what's even worse is the a questioner only looking for 1 answer for reaffirmation of their plan, and ignore 12 other accurate suggestions. Much like the "why can't I keep a Tang in a 20L?" threads.
Maybe instead of tests, or even "Mod Certified" approval (no offense, the mods here are the best I've ever seen), there should be a small box at the bottom of each post where you can answer "was this answer helpful? Y/N" (only applies to real Q/A not off topic enjoyment). I know I hate that question when doing knowledge base searches, but it does build an anonymous method of pooled opinion on a poster's performance, and a numerical score can be established broken into 4 or 5 identifiers (number of stars, fish, any other bizarre ranking) that are then linked to the poster, just like Reefer Ratings.
Henry
.Honestly, this board is small enough that even being new, it hasn't taken much to see who to listen to. On other boards, it's scary what advice gets handed out, but, what's even worse is the a questioner only looking for 1 answer for reaffirmation of their plan, and ignore 12 other accurate suggestions. Much like the "why can't I keep a Tang in a 20L?" threads.
Maybe instead of tests, or even "Mod Certified" approval (no offense, the mods here are the best I've ever seen), there should be a small box at the bottom of each post where you can answer "was this answer helpful? Y/N" (only applies to real Q/A not off topic enjoyment). I know I hate that question when doing knowledge base searches, but it does build an anonymous method of pooled opinion on a poster's performance, and a numerical score can be established broken into 4 or 5 identifiers (number of stars, fish, any other bizarre ranking) that are then linked to the poster, just like Reefer Ratings.
Henry
- Location
- Baiting Hollow Long Island NY
As was said there are no real experts in this hobby. I have been at this since the hobby started and if you read all the books you will find that most of the knowledgable people in this endeavor also disagree with each other. There is new information added every day unfortunately (I don't know how to say this respectfully) much of it is from someone with very little time in the hobby. We should of course inform each other of our successes and failures but there are different degrees of success. If someone keeps a so called difficult fish like a moorish Idol or a pinecone fish for a couple of years and he has only had one or two of them, is that success? Success is keeping ten of those fish for ten years. Most reef fish should live at least ten years and that is at the low end of their lifespan many I would imagine would live 15 years or more.
My reef is far from success, it has problems like everyone's does and it is by far not the best looking tank here.
I don't like to give advice on setting up a tank because most younger people would question my methods. I still run a RUGF. Should I advise people to do that? It has worked for me for 36 years but now there is different thinking on substrates and RUGF's are not used anymore except by us more "mature" guys. :lol2: I also use NSW from the Sound. Should I teach people that? Sometimes I bleach it with Clorox :eek1:. I treat Pop Eye with a hypodermic needle and operate on fish to remove tumors.
These methods fell out of favor because most people don't stay in this hobby for many years. I personally feel that we have too much information now and the majority of it is incorrect.
There was one person in this hobby in the fiftees that I would call an "expert" He is also known as "The Father of Salt Water Fish Keeping" his name was Robert Straughn. I still have his book. There was no reef tanks then but he was a collector and it seems that he collected and kept just about everything. He is the person I learned from. It was all common sense fish keeping without anything technical. He also invented, or at least condoned UG filters.
One more thing, what is the deal with post counts? I am on three of these boards and I couldn't tell you within 1,000 what my post count is.
Enough rambling, I hope I diden't offend anyone as I am also here to learn.
Have a great day.
Paul
My reef is far from success, it has problems like everyone's does and it is by far not the best looking tank here.
I don't like to give advice on setting up a tank because most younger people would question my methods. I still run a RUGF. Should I advise people to do that? It has worked for me for 36 years but now there is different thinking on substrates and RUGF's are not used anymore except by us more "mature" guys. :lol2: I also use NSW from the Sound. Should I teach people that? Sometimes I bleach it with Clorox :eek1:. I treat Pop Eye with a hypodermic needle and operate on fish to remove tumors.
These methods fell out of favor because most people don't stay in this hobby for many years. I personally feel that we have too much information now and the majority of it is incorrect.
There was one person in this hobby in the fiftees that I would call an "expert" He is also known as "The Father of Salt Water Fish Keeping" his name was Robert Straughn. I still have his book. There was no reef tanks then but he was a collector and it seems that he collected and kept just about everything. He is the person I learned from. It was all common sense fish keeping without anything technical. He also invented, or at least condoned UG filters.
One more thing, what is the deal with post counts? I am on three of these boards and I couldn't tell you within 1,000 what my post count is.
Enough rambling, I hope I diden't offend anyone as I am also here to learn.
Have a great day.
Paul
- Location
- Montclair, NJ
I agree with Paul. There is a lot of people on the boards who give the "book" or "accepted" advice. I am interested in experience just like in Paul's case. I have a "so-called" reef tank that breaks a lot of rules (i.e. Sharks, stingrays, puffers, boxfish, shore crabs, Toadfish, shrimp, sand from the bay, etc, etc). Granted my tank does not have SPS or look like a lot of the beautiful tanks on this site but who says that is what I want (I do have a "normal" reef tank too)?
I am not claiming to be an expert but if someone wanted to keep a stingray in their reef tank I bet the response would be "no" 9 out of 10 times. That 1 "yes" would be me as I have done it for quite some time. Does that make it bad advice?
Just a thought and I guess the badge idea would help this out but then how does someone earn a badge? I have seen questionable advice from people with 3,000 posts and been a member since 2004 and I have seen great advice that has personally helped me out from people with less than 50.
I am not claiming to be an expert but if someone wanted to keep a stingray in their reef tank I bet the response would be "no" 9 out of 10 times. That 1 "yes" would be me as I have done it for quite some time. Does that make it bad advice?
Just a thought and I guess the badge idea would help this out but then how does someone earn a badge? I have seen questionable advice from people with 3,000 posts and been a member since 2004 and I have seen great advice that has personally helped me out from people with less than 50.
Last edited:
- Location
- NYC - 10026
the more knowledgeable members have a responsibility to the MR community to call out bad advice given, otherwise the misinformation reflects poorly on the site as a whole.
having nudibar and selling posts not included in post count might make post count a slightly more informative statistic, but ultimately it is not useful. There should be a post quality rating, gold stars, etc. I think it can be intimidating for someone new to the boards to sort thru all the information and post count is probably used as a judge of experience in the hobby. It can take a lot of reading to sort out who the most experienced reefers in the area are and realize that some of them just don't post that often (but listen up when they do)
having nudibar and selling posts not included in post count might make post count a slightly more informative statistic, but ultimately it is not useful. There should be a post quality rating, gold stars, etc. I think it can be intimidating for someone new to the boards to sort thru all the information and post count is probably used as a judge of experience in the hobby. It can take a lot of reading to sort out who the most experienced reefers in the area are and realize that some of them just don't post that often (but listen up when they do)
- Location
- Dingmans ferry PA
i tell u since i began using this site my tank has never looked so great.i would say 95 percent of the advise i have got has been very helpful,and if someone gave me bad advise someone would correct them.this site is for learning and fun do not make it a "im smarter than u" site because then we are going to get very competitive on who knows more.leave it the way it is and lets all have fun and continue to all get along
- Location
- Baiting Hollow Long Island NY
Unlike stamp collecting which is a one way kind of hobby, (you stick stamps in a book and look at them) we are dealing with living animals in varying states of age and health. We take them from the sea and put them in a multitude of differing tanks and we feed them all sorts of things that they have never seen before. It is amazing that we get anything to live. And there starts the disagreements on methods to do things. For instance I have kept clams for many years under regular flourescent lighting, I now keep them under MH lighting, I really can't see any difference. They grew huge either way, is one way the only way? But if you look up "clams" you will see that most posts say that MH is required.
Many people try to keep copperband butterflies and feed them everything except what they eat in the sea which is worms, then keep asking advice as to why they keep dying. It's the same with mandarins which I find to be the easiest, no maintenance fish there is but in spite of all the advice people still ask what to feed them. It is a fish that you don't feed, it feeds itself but for some reason it is not getting through.
I think what I am trying to convey is that besides just getting advice we should try to learn all we can about an animal especially what it does in the sea and then with the advice here form our own conclusion.
I have been lucky to be able to travel a lot, I recently went on a diving trip to Tahiti to learn about moorish Idols, if I relied on "experts" many of whom have never dove I would know nothing as the information about them is nil. Another pet peeve of mine is so called "Ich Magnet" tangs. Tangs get ich because they are schooling fish and are never alone, that causes stress which causes ich. Learning the habits of those fish in the sea would help greatly with keeping them. I know we all can't dive but the ones of us that do can help by trying to teach the habbits of these animals to the best of our knowledge.
I am not sure if all this was off topic, sorry if it was. :fishhit:
Paul
Many people try to keep copperband butterflies and feed them everything except what they eat in the sea which is worms, then keep asking advice as to why they keep dying. It's the same with mandarins which I find to be the easiest, no maintenance fish there is but in spite of all the advice people still ask what to feed them. It is a fish that you don't feed, it feeds itself but for some reason it is not getting through.
I think what I am trying to convey is that besides just getting advice we should try to learn all we can about an animal especially what it does in the sea and then with the advice here form our own conclusion.
I have been lucky to be able to travel a lot, I recently went on a diving trip to Tahiti to learn about moorish Idols, if I relied on "experts" many of whom have never dove I would know nothing as the information about them is nil. Another pet peeve of mine is so called "Ich Magnet" tangs. Tangs get ich because they are schooling fish and are never alone, that causes stress which causes ich. Learning the habits of those fish in the sea would help greatly with keeping them. I know we all can't dive but the ones of us that do can help by trying to teach the habbits of these animals to the best of our knowledge.
I am not sure if all this was off topic, sorry if it was. :fishhit:
Paul
- Location
- Brooklyn, NY
To bring it back to Kedd's intent ( I think), this is why I advocate all beginners start with good books to gain a baseline of information and terminology. While one can quibble with some of the info presented in the usual texts, it is hard to argue that that info presented is less accurate than any number of on-line posts by who knows who. If a noob can understand the basics as presented in well researched texts then they have a baseline to begin to evaluate advise from anonymous on-line sources.
Randy
Randy
Randy I agree books are invaluable. if everyone one read, for example, delbeek/sprungs "the reef aquarium science, art, and technology volume 3"
everyone would have a great base for understanding what's going on in our tanks. how about an MR book club as well?
- Location
- Stamford CT
Wow I wake up and now I have to take a test?
Oh and yes I do need to learn to type and spell.
Spell check is what the site needs LOL.
This thread was never meant to bash anyone.
What works for one, may not work for another, but advise should be based on some experience.
Paul B, very well said.
Oh and yes I do need to learn to type and spell.
Spell check is what the site needs LOL.
This thread was never meant to bash anyone.
What works for one, may not work for another, but advise should be based on some experience.
Paul B, very well said.
Jonathan, I think the idea of a book club may work well. It could be structured around a given book for several months, with threads discussing major topics, including personal experiences and impressions that relate to the book. Having threads like that in one forum would be a tremendous resource for those of us new to this, not as cliff notes, but a commentary to guide someone reading them in the future. As the lag to publishing always results in not covering the latest approaches and opinions, it would serve to keep the book relevant to new developments in the hobby.
The question, though, is who is going to be Oprah and choose the books?
Henry
Sponsor Reefs
We're a FREE website, and we exist because of hobbyists like YOU who help us run this community.
Click here to sponsor $10:
