Why do so many people get out of the hobby?
This hobby has been around for 44 years and yet you can count the number of tanks that are at least 20 years old on one hand. OK, maybe two, I didn't really count, but work with me. The vast majority of threads are very new tanks and the second largest number of threads besides disease threads is "Getting out of the hobby, everything for sale" threads. Why is that?
I think I know. It takes a special (weird) type of person to keep at this for a large number of years. By that I mean a person with more varied interests than just keeping some beautiful fish alive. When I started, me and Moses would sit and watch our guppies. After we managed to keep the fish alive we got so excited to see them spawn. Then we would sit up all night with an eye dropper so we could feed each one individually and watch it grow. We were horrified when one (or most of them) died. And they were guppies. Then when we were proficient with breeding different strains of guppies to get different colors we tried mollies, then swordtails and any livebearers we could get our hands on. But that got boring and we needed more of a challenge. There were so many fish to choose from. We had kissing gourami’s, angelfish, discus, zebra’s and bettas with their very cool bubble nests. We did this for years until that was so easy that we did not get excited when our fish spawned. Not being exciting is death to a hobby and we almost went on to other endeavors like trying to guess the phone numbers of Supermodels. But wait. Something happened just in the nick of time that kept us in the hobby.
Someone imported salt water fish into the US. I don't remember who that was but whoever he was, it kept my interest because now I no longer needed to watch my freshwater fish spawn as that was boring because everyone was able to do it. If anyone can do it, it isn't as much fun because we couldn't brag about our success and get fish Geek points. The thrill was gone.
But saltwater fish opened up an entirely new field that no one knew anything about. If a store sold salt water fish they had a huge sign in their window proclaiming that they had salt water fish. That usually meant they had a 5 gallon tank with three, ich infested blue devils and a depressed domino with a social disease on his way to having last rites. But those damsels were so fascinating because now, we again had bragging rites and although we were not very good at keeping these guys alive, no one else could either. Eventually our damsels spawned for us and we were again able to get out the eye dropper and stay up late at night feeding them one at a time. The thrill was back. Much of the thrill was that there was virtually no information available about these things, I mean none, and computers were not invented yet so every day that we kept a damsel alive was a thrill, sort of like bungee jumping but different. I really miss those days as now it is simple to keep most fish alive and to kill a damsel you need to lay it in the street and have a 1957 Chevy Malibu run over it, twice.
Now with the internet and advice coming from every little village on earth there is very little thrill at all. If you need to know something all you do is Google it and an entire plethora of information is at your fingertips. Of course almost all of it is wrong based on rumor, conjecture, supposition, guesswork, innuendos, and drug induced rantings by someone who started a tank last Tuesday and now is the resident expert.
I myself have been doing this a while so I know better on a few things but I can see how it can be overwhelming. I read so many things that I am so opposed to that it drives me nuts so I limit my posts on almost all forums now because of the arguments. Of course I am also old and opinionated so I guess I also am easy to argue with. My old school theories are debunked by young college grads with all sorts of book learning and a cell phone with a google app ready to find something to disagree with. That is fine and is the way of the world. But I think the main reason so many people drop out is that most of the thrill is gone. Almost every fish that can be kept, is kept. We can now keep fish for their entire normal lifespan with no problems.
Thank God for corals. Those gems are still a source of wonder as there are so many types with different needs and so many opinions as to their care. How much light? How much current? Do they need to be fed? What is the best temperature and salinity? How much nitrate can they handle and how much do they need, if any? Would a Supermodel be able to successfully keep a coral? No one really knows so the hobby has hope.
