How much research did you do before taking the plunge?

[Paul B]

In 1971 when I started my tank there was no information on salt water except this, which was little to no help.



Robert Straughn, "The Father of Salt Water Fish Keeping" wrote "The Salt Water Aquarium in the Home" which was my bible. The Man collected everything as there was nothing for sale and he knew how to feed everything.

Besides that. it was trial and mostly error. But eventually I succeeded to keep simple damsels alive and after a few years learned how to keep most, but not all things alive with very little help from me.

The most important thing is that fish know how to stay healthy and disease free as long as we leave them alone.

 

[fish farmer]

When I started setting up my reef in 2000 I likely put about 2 to 5 months of research into it, online, magazines and a couple of dated books I had on the subject. I had some experience with a FO tank in the early 90's and have the B.S. in Aquaculture/Fisheries work knowledge.

I think once I found several online resources like RC, RDO, etc. I was looking at them on my work computer and I happened to get a home computer that winter and spent hours on that daily. I still have some of the old online articles printed off in a folder. By April I had rock curing in my new tank.

 

[snorklr]

hey you didn't have a box for over 20 years...read everything from Robert Straughn, Martin Moe, Julian Sprung and Charles Delbeek to John Tullock along with countless magazine articles...was still completely intimidated by all the evolving and conflicting info and afraid to setup a tank...finally visited a friend in Florida with a 100 gal full of live rock and a metal halide...he just did water changes and bought the water from the LFS that was pre dosed...and trust me he never picked up a book, they tested his water, and no it wasn't tank of the month full of acro's but it proved the hobby could be a lot simpler than I had imagined

 

[kenchilada]

I did 100 years of research 1 miles below the ocean’s surface surviving only on kelp

 

[shcrimps]

honestly less than a month or so
i tried freshwater for a couple months after watching videos but never had much success
(started freshwater for the shrimp) left that and started saltwater for the cooler shrimp
was way easier for me doing saltwater
very minimal research but i did pretty good
started out with the way overpriced “liverock” from petco with live sand and made my own saltwater with distilled water
hang on back filters, the works you know
( i think i even had a bright blue background at once which i now think is very tacky )

then went to a real lfs, started watching hundreds of videos learning constantly (still am)
then found a local forum (it’s not as good as it used to be but it’s still great)
few shrimp and easy fish later went on to corals
once those weren’t doing well after adding i tested all parameters and all was well so i upgraded do a aqua knight light (for $60 at the time it was great) had one for about a year and it grew corals really
was very on top of maintenance first two years and setup new tanks all the time
learned what worked and didn’t
now a couple years later i’ve got a 65 gallon running for a year on a canister dosing all for reef with amazing growth
basically zero maintenance
( i skipped a lot but there’s wayyy tooo much )
this hobby is one of the best decisions and worst i’ve made lololol
stressful at times but helps my mental health and keeps me learning and wanting to know everything i can

 

[Punchanello]

Day 300 - start youtube channel
Day 301 - Go full edgelord and tell your subscribers why quarantine is bs.
Day 302 - double-down - post video "why I lost all my fish and why you still shouldn't quarantine".

It took me a good two years of reading and researching and saving my pennies. That was probably too long. You can overthink these things and I ended up overcomplicating my approach and buying things that I never ended up using.

That said, I am always shocked by posts asking whether a copepod is a good guy or a bad guy.

 

[BryanM]

Seriously, there was an aquarium on TV one night, I popped off and said you'd never want one in the house, and she said you're wrong.

I found a deal on craigslist, and above the deal (which was good), we've already spent $3k or thereabouts, and its likely that water will be in the tank this weekend... That was about 3 weeks ago.