Jestersix

Coming soon...

Information only. Opinionated and in layman’s terms. Will try to answer the questions I see asked over and over in newby forums. Will guide through the setup of a new tank - every single step.

Although BRS is great, most of it leaves more questions than answers. I, for one, have a hard time listening to them drone on and on.
 
svreef said:
Information only. Opinionated and in layman’s terms. Will try to answer the questions I see asked over and over in newby forums. Will guide through the setup of a new tank - every single step.

Although BRS is great, most of it leaves more questions than answers. I, for one, have a hard time listening to them drone on and on.
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Yeah I have to watch those videos multiple times and pull out tidbits of info each time. I like putting them on while doing maintenance because they do have good advice
 
Good start to your admirable project!

I think you’ll find it quite challenging to give simple correct advice. Mostly because so many choices are subjective and we don’t actually know a universal best practice for large parts of the hobby. Lots of people will strongly disagree with whatever you say in these more subjective areas (all the interesting areas). If you try to treat the subject with nuance and discussion of pros and cons, then it isn’t simple any more. If you bulldoze through and just say your opinion as fact, you‘ll catch flak for it.

Since BRS was brought up, the way they deal with this they have two different styles of videos, ones where they give the consensus of themselves +/- WWC and give simple straightforward advice for methods of "proven success", vs their more detail discussions. There are lots of times I don’t agree with their simple advice, and occasionally they are demonstrably wrong, but I still think it’s very useful to the community. Sounds like your website will basically be a text version of the simple approach, but with just your opinions as opposed to someone else’s.

If you open your articles to posted comments, you’ll get a lot of annoying discussion that presumably you are trying to avoid with this simplified approach. If you don’t, you won’t get positive or negative feedback as to whether all the hard work you are putting in is useful to people. It’s a catch-22.
 
I agree with you and I know there are many subjects that are as you describe.

If you look at the Facebook forums, I see the same simple questions asked over and over and I believe that a complete walk-through of a new tank setup can address a lot of these questions.

For example, a lot of newcomers
do water changes during cycling - not realizing that it stalls the cycle. A simple bullet point can address that. Some folks add a CUC before there’s anything to clean up or run their lights early.

The site won’t be preaching on best methods - it will show a concrete example of one setup. I will be going through all the steps myself and I may succeed or not. Think of it as one, very detailed tank journal.

Later on, I may expand it to include more in depth articles about subjects that are more controversial.

My aim is to hold a newcomer’s hand through one setup. Hopefully showing that it doesn’t have to be so complicated.

Oh - and I will be looking for contributors too. I can’t do all of it myself.
 
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Allow me to give an example to what john is talking about..
"For example, a lot of newcomers
do water changes during cycling - not realizing that it stalls the cycle" over my 12 years of reefing, 6 systems, 2 fug+live rocks, 1 red sea program, 2 zeovit I always start water change at 2 weeks mark. And never delays my water change for the reason you pointed out newcomers do.;)
 
Not sure what you mean but I believe using an arbitrary time (2 weeks) will not work in general. A better rule, IMHO, is to wait until you have zero ammonia and nitrite and some nitrate. If you change water before then, you are removing ammonia and nitrite, which are feeding the cycle.

I don’t believe in these time-based milestones for newcomers. They work only when you’re experienced and are doing it the same way over and over. Even then, they are a proxy for the real reason you’re taking some action.

But, like I said, I’m going to do it my way, which is not necessarily the only or best way.
 
svreef said:
Not sure what you mean but I believe using an arbitrary time (2 weeks) will not work in general. A better rule, IMHO, is to wait until you have zero ammonia and nitrite and some nitrate. If you change water before then, you are removing ammonia and nitrite, which are feeding the cycle.

I don’t believe in these time-based milestones for newcomers. They work only when you’re experienced and are doing it the same way over and over. Even then, they are a proxy for the real reason you’re taking some action.

But, like I said, I’m going to do it my way, which is not necessarily the only or best way.
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What I meant is that there are many types of reefing and that I disagreed with your statment about the WC
 
svreef said:
Not sure what you mean but I believe using an arbitrary time (2 weeks) will not work in general. A better rule, IMHO, is to wait until you have zero ammonia and nitrite and some nitrate. If you change water before then, you are removing ammonia and nitrite, which are feeding the cycle.

I don’t believe in these time-based milestones for newcomers. They work only when you’re experienced and are doing it the same way over and over. Even then, they are a proxy for the real reason you’re taking some action.

But, like I said, I’m going to do it my way, which is not necessarily the only or best way.
Click to expand...
I have the same concern and sentiment that @JVU and @ofzakaria are expressing. I don’t think there is one thing in this hobby that is universal enough to give a simple single answer for. @ofzakaria gave you an example in that he has a prescribed way of doing things that works for him. You expressed your own method (no water changes until ammonia and nitrites zero out). That method is not a universally agreed upon approach and doesn’t work in all situations. There are occasions where the nitrite gets too high and stalls the cycle and a water change is desirable to bring it down so that the nitrifying bacteria can take hold and turn the nitrite into nitrate.
 
Flagg37 said:
I have the same concern and sentiment that @JVU and @ofzakaria are expressing. I don’t think there is one thing in this hobby that is universal enough to give a simple single answer for. @ofzakaria gave you an example in that he has a prescribed way of doing things that works for him. You expressed your own method (no water changes until ammonia and nitrites zero out). That method is not a universally agreed upon approach and doesn’t work in all situations. There are occasions where the nitrite gets too high and stalls the cycle and a water change is desirable to bring it down so that the nitrifying bacteria can take hold and turn the nitrite into nitrate.
Click to expand...
Actually my point was even more general, I have never cared or delayed my water change. Some systems I start immediately weekly. never had an issue attributed to ot.
As we are all basically saying, opinions are subjective and it's hard to say you know a universal method to do it...
Some times opinions are generated by someone struggled with something, try many things then when issue is resolved the last thing tried is cited as the silver bullet.
So much opinions are generated by people treating algae or more popular recently dinos as an example..
 
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