Just a thought on giving advice...

[All_talk]

I'm going to put this idea out there...

Many of us come here for advice on reefing, and there seems to be no end to the diversity in responses, this in itself is fine. But how is one to filter this mass of input? I'm not talking about weeding the good from the bad (there seems to be plenty of both), I'm looking for a way to sort out what could apply to mine (or your) particular situation. Most of us would agree there is more than one way to successfully run a reef tank, there has to be, there is more than one type of reef tank, right?

I suggest the idea that any advice to others comes with a recent picture of your reef tank.

If the tank looks like something I am striving for I can weight the advice appropriately. If the tank does not look like what I'm going for then I can weigh that advice appropriately. I believe all advice should be taken with a grain of salt, but how big is the grain?


Note: This is not my original idea... Thank You Richard Ross for being a voice of experience and reason in this hobby. Reef Beef!

 

[MiniCoco]

I'm going to put this idea out there...

Many of us come here for advice on reefing, and there seems to be no end to the diversity in responses, this in itself is fine. But how is one to filter this mass of input? I'm not talking about weeding the good from the bad (there seems to be plenty of both), I'm looking for a way to sort out what could apply to mine (or your) particular situation. Most of us would agree there is more than one way to successfully run a reef tank, there has to be, there is more than one type of reef tank, right?

I suggest the idea that any advice to others comes with a recent picture of your reef tank.

If the tank looks like something I am striving for I can weight the advice appropriately. If the tank does not look like what I'm going for then I can weigh that advice appropriately. I believe all advice should be taken with a grain of salt, but how big is the grain?


Note: This is not my original idea... Thank You Richard Ross for being a voice of experience and reason in this hobby. Reef Beef!

While I fully understand your position and intent with such a query, I could not agree with your post. I want to be able to search for answers and determine for myself what responses are pertinent or helpful to not only a problem or challenge I may be going through reefing from as varied a population of opinions and experience as possible. Placing a requirement of posting pictures or proof of some success gives me a sense of an elitist point of view that frankly gives me a foul taste in my mouth so to speak. I choose to not post my reef and the reason for such a choice is none of your concern, but I do enjoy answering and sometimes contributing to the success of others in their personal journeys in this hobby. I personally have come a long way in learning what it is to be successful in reefing from someone who simply fell in love with the beauty and challenge that reefing provides well over thirty years ago. A picture does nothing to help continue the progress of ideas and new technologies and theories that this great hobby enjoyed. I hope my opinion is valued by some people even if I choose to not post pictures. In any event, happy reefing/aquarium keeping to one and all.

 

[CrunchyBananas]

As I've always heard/preached, "If their tank ain't nice, don't take their advice!"

 

[C4ctus99]

I’m gonna need some sort of credentials to weed out all the poor opinions in this thread and figure out which advice is best… Anyone have any pictures of their official Forum Opinion With Live Responsibility (FOWLR) card?

 

[Dburr1014]

Anyone notice that 95% of the people posting here are experienced or semi-experiened reefers? We all disagree with the OP. Maybe not 100%, but to an extent. I think because most of us think we give good advice and we also think other people do but not as good advice, or just flat out bad advice.

I think the OP's original post was just for newbies to weed through good and bad advice and how to do it.

There really is no great solution here. The best we can do as a group is to call out the bad advice and ask for research in why that advice was given. The problem with that is sometimes a mod has to step in because we are all passionate about is hobby and feelings get hurt when a person needs to defend there position. The thread a lot of times goes sideways.

Now that I just circled back to the start of the thread, I'll step down.
LOL

 

[lion king]

Anyone notice that 95% of the people posting here are experienced or semi-experiened reefers? We all disagree with the OP. Maybe not 100%, but to an extent. I think because most of us think we give good advice and we also think other people do but not as good advice, or just flat out bad advice.

I think the OP's original post was just for newbies to weed through good and bad advice and how to do it.

There really is no great solution here. The best we can do as a group is to call out the bad advice and ask for research in why that advice was given. The problem with that is sometimes a mod has to step in because we are all passionate about is hobby and feelings get hurt when a person needs to defend there position. The thread a lot of times goes sideways.

Now that I just circled back to the start of the thread, I'll step down.
LOL

I used to get into with bad advice, but now I think sometimes they are just trolls, because sometimes it's just that ludicrous. When the questions are so elementary I just say" click my name and find all threads" because I know they have done no research on their own. Now I will just post my opinion and try not to challenge someone else's, then allow the poster to do some work on their to sort it out.

 

[fish farmer]

I agree BUT....look at the current trend/insight/thread about biodiversity...dry rock vs something not dry.....are there solid scientific comparisons of what is the best way?

If I say go with live rock it worked for me and many others agree.....was it really the rock or something else like maintenance or other factors in my success? I can't link to a study that confirms my opinion.

 

[lion king]

I agree BUT....look at the current trend/insight/thread about biodiversity...dry rock vs something not dry.....are there solid scientific comparisons of what is the best way?

If I say go with live rock it worked for me and many others agree.....was it really the rock or something else like maintenance or other factors in my success? I can't link to a study that confirms my opinion.

You can say it worked for you, and that's a good start. But I can say I do not use live rock anymore because of the risk of dangerous hitchhikers, nuisance algaes including bubble algae, aiptasia, and they fact that many lfs will plumb their live rock into their fish systems which could also allow the transfer of fish disease. Then allow the poster to consider that, and make a decision on their own.

 

[Lbrdsoxfan]

I’m not saying that is not the case, just that at some point everyone was just starting out and quite frankly hopping on BRS and trying to figure out which return pump is best is overwhelming, much less getting into lights, filter media, etc.

I had no clue what I wanted for my tank’s setup until a couple months ago, then I had to go look up a sump. Lord knows I can’t figure out what my ideal fish stock list is, but I’ve been narrowing it down since starting.

I guess my point was just that there are legitimately 1 million ways to skin this cat and for me it took being in the hobby for several months to figure out how I wanted to do it

Nah BRS didn't exist in my time. Lot of trial and error, just was cheaper to break in to the hobby back then.

 

[Perthegallon]

You can always PM me. Threads get buried so fast on this forum, no one replied to my latest build thread. It's on page one for roughly three seconds and PoOf, gone and replaced with "why isn't my tank cycled yet" threads.

Thank you if you could take at my last one I have hair line algae covered in red so im not sure how to take care of it my phosphates do get low

 

[mcwhng]

Was that you?

How recent a picture of your tank should it be?

Old school IS the new school!..,

 

[Crustaceon]

Thank you if you could take at my last one I have hair line algae covered in red so im not sure how to take care of it my phosphates do get low

A lot of people here will tell you to reduce nutrients to starve out algae. That unfortunately doesn’t work well if you already have an algae problem and can take months or longer to resolve the problem that way. The reason is, if you try to starve that algae, it’ll die, but only a little bit at a time. This will cause nitrates and phosphates locked up in the tissue of the dying algae to be released back into the water, which pretty much immediately gets consumed by other living algae to stay alive. This is why I say mechanical removal is the best option no matter what it is. An organism can’t thrive if you relentlessly attack its population and will eventually be supplanted on the food chain by something you can’t remove as easily, usually bacteria and coralline algae which is what you want. The best way to go is remove the nuisance stuff from the rock/sand in whatever way you can (toothbrush FTW) and siphon out of the tank until it stops coming back. Algae and even dinos and cyano have all been resolved this way.

 

[Perthegallon]

A lot of people here will tell you to reduce nutrients to starve out algae. That unfortunately doesn’t work well if you already have an algae problem and can take months or longer to resolve the problem that way. The reason is, if you try to starve that algae, it’ll die, but only a little bit at a time. This will cause nitrates and phosphates locked up in the tissue of the dying algae to be released back into the water, which pretty much immediately gets consumed by other living algae to stay alive. This is why I say mechanical removal is the best option no matter what it is. An organism can’t thrive if you relentlessly attack its population and will eventually be supplanted on the food chain by something you can’t remove as easily, usually bacteria and coralline algae which is what you want. The best way to go is remove the nuisance stuff from the rock/sand in whatever way you can (toothbrush FTW) and siphon out of the tank until it stops coming back. Algae and even dinos and cyano have all been resolved this way.

Yes the manual removal works great im having a weird issue with the hair algae is now covered in red what I believe is cyno

 

[All_talk]

I love that this thread has generated so much discussion, good points have been made on all sides.

And somehow I think it’s fitting that it has evolved to advise on algae control.

 

[lion king]

I love that this thread has generated so much discussion, good points have been made on all sides.

And somehow I think it’s fitting that it has evolved to advise on algae control.

Here's another OPinion on algae, I have never seen the magnitude of algae that I see today because of one thing. The advent of led lighting, any old reefers should easily attest to that, anyone that has come along since the dominance of led lighting will fight me tooth and nail. Rather than to go into deep specifics, there are wavelengths of light frequencies that do and will feed everything from algaes to cyano. Read some science papers rather than opinions from hobbyists and you might understand. But it's really not as simple as one thing usually.

 

[fish farmer]

Here's another OPinion on algae, I have never seen the magnitude of algae that I see today because of one thing. The advent of led lighting, any old reefers should easily attest to that, anyone that has come along since the dominance of led lighting will fight me tooth and nail. Rather than to go into deep specifics, there are wavelengths of light frequencies that do and will feed everything from algaes to cyano. Read some science papers rather than opinions from hobbyists and you might understand. But it's really not as simple as one thing usually.

I had plenty of algae problems running 10,000k halides with PC actinics. I could throw up a pre led pic on my current system with loads of algae. It wasn't because of lighting.

Algae issues are a function of many things, but is usually due to improper filtration for the system, too much input, not enough output or conversion to biomass.

 

[lion king]

I had plenty of algae problems running 10,000k halides with PC actinics. I could throw up a pre led pic on my current system with loads of algae. It wasn't because of lighting.

Algae issues are a function of many things, but is usually due to improper filtration for the system, too much input, not enough output or conversion to biomass.

Like I said my opinion, and my opinion also is to let the poster choose, they can research how certain wavelengths will fuel algae or not. And yes other inputs as well like nutrients, nitrates and phosphates, but also other chemistry like silicates. You see much more complicated than one simple answer. Simple point of reference for research, you will get enough red spectrum of light from what's included in the blues, overall corals do not need the addition of a stand alone red, red light spectrum scientifically will feed cyanobacteria, turn off your stand alone reds and it may help with cyano. There is also the imbalance of nitrtates to phosphates. A poster can expand on what I said, or ignore, it's up to them. Lower white spectrums will also feed algae, it's easy to verify, this alone isn't the perfect answer. And one refers experience isn't the answer, but maybe some research into the science rather than an experience may help.

 

[thatmanMIKEson]

I actually have an idea for something we can do here where a posters tank info and photos, equipment, experience would available in one click (Been thinking about this for a while) Provided that they choose to participate. We could give a special recognition badge or name color to those that do. Then when someone offers advice anyone could do a quick click and see if the person has had success of their own.

Thats excellent! That's why I like this platform it's always improving, good idea!

 

[lion king]

This is why it's important to allow a broad range of opinions, back to algae. The easiest and most simple answer is filtration and nutrient control. Most people want the easiest fix, and for many this may work. Add a macro algae reactor, a bigger skimmer, cut back on feeding things like pellets which I find to be algae fertilizer. But then for another they may find their source water may be high in silicates. Perhaps adding more cuc that consume dietris and uneaten food. And yes even if some disagree, check the value of your lighting parameters, maybe too high in the warm white spectrum, the overall intensity, and the duration. While one adjustment may work for one hobbyist it may not work for another. It doesn't make my suggestions wrong.

 

[Richsoar]

I have often asked this question when reading the feature article of this site. Most of time it doesn't produce advice, only opinions, in my opinion. I don't know if this qualifies as listening or taking one persons advice but if the topic is in my interest I'll look for collaboration (safety in numbers) and go outside to other sources before taking action.

 

[jabberwock]

So, it is a great thread. Thanks OP. I did not read every post.

In my experience, shorter posts generally have more credibility. People who admit their limitations are generally more trustworthy. Attempting to validate people's ability to correctly provide accurate information (other than staff members) is a bad idea.

The internet is a huge landscape that we must all navigate at our own discretion. Enter at your own risk.

Required tank pic...