9 unpopular opinions

Dorsetsteve · Jun 19, 2022

Euphyilla, such as Torches and Hammers come in green or brown. They are not orange or gold or bloody pink, they’re brown. They were brown 20 years ago and they’re brown now.
I saw some earlier advertised as blue, green and yellow… errrmate they’re green?

If you’re wearing yellow/orange glasses to see your corals colour, your lying to yourself. It’s like standing on your head and pretending everyone else is walking on the ceiling. Crack.

Your tank must not hit 28c or your Acros will bleach.

That’s my top 3.

undermind · Jun 19, 2022

MnFish1 said:
Right - and contrary to popular wisdom - they do not need copepods - they will eat flake food. This is one of the problems IMHO here - mandarins need copepods. No - not true - yet I have seen these bottles of copepods being sold for a huge amount of money at my LFS. Which need to be replenished. IMHO - No

I would agree with this if you put "sometimes" before everything instance of "eat" or "need".

MnFish1 · Jun 19, 2022

undermind said:
I would agree with this if you put "sometimes" before everything instance of "eat" or "need".

Correct - I should have said 'in my experience'

undermind · Jun 19, 2022

MnFish1 said:
Correct - I should have said 'in my experience'

Captive bred Mandarins are the best choice for sure. Also the Target Dragonets are known to take prepared food more often than wild caught Mandarins

Wasabiroot · Jun 20, 2022

Reef tank controllers are way overpriced and usually have options to monitor things nobody really cares about rather than things everyone wishes they did. Hey let's offer a 200 dollar attachment to monitor ORP instead of a way to test nitrates reliably and relatively accurately. I realize it's more complicated than that but...
Or they require you to shop within several different confusingly named devices and the true cost becomes much higher once reagents and requisite dosing pumps are considered. Hey I want an all in one solution - well you need this 400 dollar unit AND this 900 dollar unit, but not THAT very similarly named unit, which does something else.

Coral prices are absurdly marked up virtually everywhere and while shipping costs are expensive and many retailers offer great service, a simple monti cap (for example) should not cost over 10 dollars and we need to vote with our wallets more. A coral selling business is a business and its goal is making money, sure, but what about the propagation of corals so that more people can enjoy them, rather than turning into a Ferrari dealership? Simply put, some of the prices on tiny frags is rather ludicrous. We know it's a slow grower. we also know you're making a ridiculous profit on it and have 30 frags in your 20 foot long tanks.

Live sales create FOMO and are done so often that they aren't special any more, nor typically are the sale prices anything exciting. The prices that ARE good are sniped so quickly that they may as well not exist. I'd rather just see more reasonably priced frags overall and on a more consistent basis, or sales that last longer than a weekend. It also (in my PERSONAL opinion) moves the hobby closer to "collectoritis" and farther from appreciating what we've got in our tanks already. This is coming from someone who has participated in a lot of livesales. I also think the dynamic between posters and stores can get a little weird. I understand dealers are trying to boost engagement but it can come across as enabling junkies almost, lol (it did say unpopular opinions)

The inclusion of science in reefing means nothing if the science of the product is obscured by marketing gobbledegook or turned into another trade secret to be hoarded. See Brightwell Aquatic's wall of text bottles that don't really say anything profound, just something like "water chemistry is important" but with 10 times the syllables, or the many snake oil type supplements we have where the verdict is "I'm not sure if it does much".

There are multiple routes to success in this hobby and there are a not-insignificant number of hobbyists that preach specific methods as gospel and the one true way, and summarily dismiss newer solutions or alternatives as inferior. We need to do a better job of highlighting that the best results will come from research and emulating a system you admire, then following that methodology.

Meat corals (as far as I know) aren't something that is currently being legally exported, yet every site seems to have them, and new ones all the time. Weird. (I could be missing something here, but hey.)