The greatest fallacies!

[peterhos]

Hi All

I know we all love the fact that there are many ‘right’ ways to run a successful tank, and so we all enjoy the different opinions on the forum.

But, we could maybe all learn from the successful reef keepers who have a pet hate about a piece of advice, or who think that a certain piece of advice is plain wrong or unhelpful.

So, what is your ‘pet hate’ advice wise?

To put you on the spot … only one pet hate each please.

Do not Be shy.

Come along now….

 

[Budman93]

Over filtration. If you take the hobby seriously and do regular water changes you don't need a skimmer unless you have a huge tank. I just run some carbon and a filterpad on my 40g and have had great success. Before I had way too much filtration and dinos nuked my tank.

 

[albano]

Believing that your LFS does a full QT (or any QT) on their fish!

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

Thinking that nitrates of 20-30 are "extremely high" and need immediate intervention

 

[OscarHaglund]

That alk instability causes problems rather than the opposite. I feel its like thinking firetrucks cause fire because you often see them next to burning buildings

 

[A_Blind_Reefer]

Two words….dry rock

 

[vtecintegra]

Tired of hearing about garlic nonsense to cure fish diseases.

 

[jimk60]

You must do regular water changes! I went from 20% change every two weeks to 10% a month or less and things have been much better with dinos, cyano and such.

 

[brandon429]

the fallacy: that your cycle took any longer than ten days to seat, and the non digital test kit you wielded to discern that is accurate. Sum total impact: complete disregard of all fish disease study and preps instead aimed into buying bottles of bacteria over and over and over until closing the cycle becomes the sole hyperfocus. Reefer will then rush to stock fish, then within a few months be reporting tank losses and fish deaths.

Readers of those threads will never mention disease preps skipped, because we all spend time training each other on old cycling science. Net result: fish killed and restocked by the bucket loads. It'll change only when attaining a single ocellaris costs six hundred dollars, then folks will study disease preps from Jay's forum

In the meantime fish are cheap, go ahead and kill them with all manner of well intentioned ignorance.

Study recent fish death posts in the forum coming from outside the disease forum, watch how many pages the peers go never mentioning disease preps on tanks writing that they skipped both fallow and quarantine, it's amazing

The fish disease forum has the greatest loss of fish on the site ten times over, it's not the new tanks forum with cycles going on, they live well at that stage, or the chemistry forum. The single greatest cause of repeat fish loss is the last thing we train peers on or reference during fish loss troubleshoots, fact.

 

[Icryhard]

That alk instability causes problems rather than the opposite. I feel its like thinking firetrucks cause fire because you often see them next to burning buildings

You're saying that alk instability doesn't cause problems and that a stable alk causes it?

 

[brandon429]

the truth: all cycling should be about fish disease prevention. the initial steps you took to handle ammonia worked fine after day ten, move on directly into fish disease prevention steps. of course this doesn't include cycles that didn't use rocks in the setup, or cycles that didn't input feed or any bacteria source, those are unreasonable cycles resulting from someone who didn't read or self study one bit before venturing into reefing. similarly, mechanics at a car shop don't have to worry about someone pouring milk into their engine and then reporting their car won't start for some unknown reason.

if you made a reasonable cycle attempt that was copied from someone else's cycle, that worked by day ten any seneye owner (digital ammonia test kit) knows.

 

[X-37B]

That sea water has an alk of 8-9.
Wont name the vendor.

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

That the conclusions you draw from your own personal experience are empirical truths and they should be presented as such even though you may not have any idea regarding the biology of the organism in question, not know a lot about chemistry related to your observation, other factors which may have led to your observation, and disregard others' personal experiences or scientific research because you're somehow certain the conclusion you drew just has to be true and work for everyone.

 

[exnisstech]

Stray electricity kills stuff in our tanks. 50 volts in the water, me falling off a chair when I got jolted but fish, corals and nems all fine

 

[jda]

Advice given based on what was read, heard or told, rather than what was experienced. ...or at least not differentiating between the two. Most of what I type is from actual experience, but when it is not, I try and point it out.

 

[Troylee]

You're saying that alk instability doesn't cause problems and that a stable alk causes it?

You could say that lol… keep it in range and it can jump around with no I’ll intent… it cracks me up when people say your tank has to be super stable and 2 years old to keep Sps

 

[GARRIGA]

Crazy notion that all tanks need to be kept as if they had sticks. Just a bunch of nonsense but it sells a lot of products like lights and ICP and sumps more expensive then my first car

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

Advice given based on what was read, heard or told, rather than what was experienced. ...or at least not differentiating between the two. Most of what I type is from actual experience, but when it is not, I try and point it out.

Absolutely agree it's important to share your experiences...I suppose it depends on the experience though as well as how many times you've had the experience. Only a single experience could be caused by so many factors in most cases it's difficult to say what led to that experience if it occurred only once or twice.

 

[jda]

As I read through these other posts, most of these are not fallacies. They are absolutely true under some circumstances, and not such a big deal under others.

Can lacking nuance be a fallacy?

 

[KK's Reef]

That small tanks are hard and can't be successful.


There are some aspects that may make small tanks appear to be harder to maintain, but if your husbandry is on point then I don't think it matters how small the tank is. Automation will be limited and things will need to done manually, but that's part of the fun. Doing things manually actually makes you more in-tune with your tank, therefore more successful.