Social Media ediquitte

[i cant think]

Over the past year, I’ve gotten pretty knee deep in this hobby.

WWC and Top Shelf Aquatics are down the street from me where I’ve made friends at both and have become very aquented with the employees .
I was lucky enough to make friends from Saltwater Aquariums and quite a few other well know businesses across the US at different large reefing events and trade shows.

Myself, I have 2 successful tanks (still learning about certain types of coral care) and a 3rd in the making ranging from nano tanks to 300 gallons tanks.

My wife posted something earlier today where she had a loss in her nano tank — and was grilled from an ammonia spike when posting parameters as she had a loss in the tank (she was being told her tank wasn’t cycled ).

One thing I have come to learn from each and every connection at these popular places, where almost all of you have shopped at or asked advice from, is that not a single one of these people like posting in social media forums (they mostly avoid them). Why you might ask? Because these communities come across as toxic and ignorant. My primary target is around well known Facebook groups to be clear.

It seems rather help individuals, most people in those forums like to equate tenure to a sixth sense where they can assume as they want and assert irrelevant and opinionated information as facts — while lacking context.

The crap my wife took was a good taste of that — and man do I hope these communities fix their toxicity.

P.S. I dont actually think R2R has a General post area — which is surprising.

Ive definitely noticed the toxicity in FB groups. One person got hammered for posting a photo of their dead CBB they had for 5 years - a bunch of people saw that photo and said that fish was malnourished. Then there was also a couple who said to stop posting photos of their dead fish as it fuels the people who are against the hobby which most of them won’t actually be on saltwater FB groups if they’re against it.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Ive definitely noticed the toxicity in FB groups. One person got hammered for posting a photo of their dead CBB they had for 5 years - a bunch of people saw that photo and said that fish was malnourished. Then there was also a couple who said to stop posting photos of their dead fish as it fuels the people who are against the hobby which most of them won’t actually be on saltwater FB groups if they’re against it.

Sad how people who simply just want help get bashed instead

 

[i cant think]

Sad how people who simply just want help get bashed instead

Definitely, I know some of the posts I’ve done come across as bashing the OP but it’s often I’ll mention that’s not how it was intended but these posts were properly going at the guy.

 

[907_Reefer]

No Facebook for the last 10+ years here and loving it

 

[KrisReef]

Exactly my point — but you know “experts with thoughts”.

The passing was a starfish and it likely starved amongst other environmental factors. We both new that’s unfortunately what probably happened, but she was barraged for all of the aforementioned reasons and more. (Sand sifting starfish she was temporarily placing in a nano tank).

She was being told that she needs to “actually do research before doing anything else to the tank”.

RIP "PATRICK?"

I try to keep my stupid humor from being toxic but occasionally I fail miserably. Sorry that you lost a starfish and I hope you both will get more active on Reef2Reef where folks are encouraged to be more civil and kind.

Kris Reef.

 

[CKW]

Social media sadly has become a platform for anyone who thinks they know everything about everything. They seem to hide behind a keyboard and vent whether they know what they’re talking about or not.
R2R, for the vast majority of the time, posts are truly helpful and sincere. Should one of us get out of line they are held accountable by the rest of us.
Personally, I don’t peruse social media as I have much more interesting things to occupy my time.

 

[RockBox13]

How much time and effort did it take you to build the kind of knowledge and capabilities that you have in your field of expertise? What did you have to go through to get to the level where you are today?
There’s some very intelligent people here with a vast intellectual capacity and the kind of education that deserves respect in itself. They’re not used to being told they are wrong. There are very few times in life where their logic, reasoning or memory ever fail them.
Then there are the high school dropouts/expulsions that have been self polluting, self destructive loners and those who have undiagnosed disabilities, autism disorders, the whole alphabet of mental health issues and the kind of legitimate criminals who never wore a suit and tie when turning someone’s pockets inside out.
But they have that same intellect and high IQ of those who worked hard and actually accomplished something in life.
How long would it take for you to teach a person of equal intelligence as you who is inexperienced with what you know best in this world, to be at your level? How long for you to have confidence that you could confidently send this person to do your job in place of you? The trick is that you can only do it in a forum in writing or pictures and sharing websites and pages with the information. This has to be done while they get incomplete, contradictory and inexperienced opinions from their friends too.
There’s many reasons why some “professionals” won’t come on a forum like this as well. McDonald’s doesn’t really make the best hamburger despite all of their success right? You’re not asking the chef on the grill there how they mastered the Quarter Pounder, probably. The people selling the most expensive corals you can make a name up for online aren’t the best reefers either. Man, Sexy Corals was just so bold to put $1500 an “eye” for some of the most underwhelming chalices ever. People lined up to hand over their $1500 to a noob who had already crashed a system full of coral bought from Tony at Reef Raft before he realized he was making more money for that dork than himself.
Anyhoo, let’s say I’m your neighbor and you see me with an adorable new puppy today and a couple days later I’m introducing you to another new puppy. I tell you the first puppy may or may not have drank some anti freeze or pool acid or whatever that the green stuff in their water bowl was, so I’m gonna let this guy try that same water because I was told a little bit of anti-freeze and muriatic acid is okay for them. Mr. Keyboard even says he’s got his dogs drinking more anti freeze than that for years without any problems.
So, reality makes itself up to the person who calls it their reality and the people that know to agree with that person because they have agreed to not disagree with one another unless they’re told by someone higher up the ladder who can’t be disagreed with.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

No Facebook for the last 10+ years here and loving it

I've only had a facebook just for facebook marketplace. Never once used it for anything besides that and I'm glad haha

 

[RockBox13]

What in hell are you trying to say?

Sorry, I get that way sometimes. I have an autism disorder sometimes called “high functioning”, but it’s called 2e Gifted Autism (not a gift) medically now. Plus the Alpha Bits: OCD, ADHD… Pros & Cons are Big Memory, Big Heart, Hyper Focus, Big Awkward, can’t shut up, Habitual Line Stepper.
Thank you for asking. I’m saying that there are Great Reefers here. Specialists in every category and they created a system with the parts that they assembled that is near the absolute best that can be done with a reef aquarium. Then there are others who
I’ve been wondering why so much focus is being put on fine tuning nitrate and phosphate levels because it takes a lot of skill, work and dedication to be at an “elite level”. I then get to read Paletta’s articles on achieving that golden ratio of 1 to 100 NO3 to PO4 and he really explained the old style of zero NO3, PO4, calcium reactors, refugiums, carbon reactors, etc.
I do not disagree with Mr. Paletta about what he observed and the conclusions he came to about the benefits of a certain level of Nitrate and Phosphate being good for corals as a source of energy for corals. That calls into the very distinct nature of a coral polyp and the symbiotic nature it has with zooxanthellae that makes it both a heterotrophic (consumes/captures outside sources of nutrition) and autotrophic (produces it’s own food from raw materials and energy through processes like photosynthesis) symbiosis. How you choose to provide that energy through the lighting intensity, providing food sources in Zooplankton and Phytoplankton, then there is the ability of the zooxanthellae to use the dissolved organic matter produced by the polyp in the form of organic nitrogen. The organic nitrogen is also used by the aerobic and anaerobic bacteria being the last to consume and convert it into

 

[RockBox13]

Nitrogen and some Hydrogen sulfide that is dealt with by other bacteria.
Now go back to when bio-pellets were introduced and a lot of people with little understanding of the bio-pellets and the carbon source it produced and a lot of people who had very nice tanks crashed and burned. It would often cause a boom in aerobic bacteria that would cloud the tank badly, then crashed and the bacteria that were supposed to be there to handle that waste are dead. It used to be a shot of vodka for the bacteria and people thought more is better so let’s get a constant source of carbon going 24/7. Your normal sources of knowledgeable information were stumped and people were told it will clear up in a couple days, make sure your skimmer is working and of course to do a water change. It did kinda work out for some people with the biological filtration capacity that didn’t overwhelm the bacteria with carbon and adjusted to get over the initial shock of a tank and bacteria drunk on bio-pellets.
Now dosing carbon is tied to the maintaining of N and P levels and 1 to 100 ratio. People with new tanks who have no real purpose for carbon or understanding of what they are putting in their tanks to manipulate the bacteria. They just trust in what some guy on the forum who “knows his stuff” says. They don’t even read the “Methanol” on the labels. So, despite the fact that there is no information about the reef tanks Paletta refers to other than they have the best looking corals he’s ever seen. Nothing about what they might feed or use for filtration, supplements, or what their maintenance procedures are. I understand why he focuses on that ratio, but he also talks about that it has to be done in a very stable tank, the need for frequent testing and the person has to have the skill to deal with the testing and dosing and being able to adjust things now in two directions from high to low and low to high to stay in range. Dosing carbon works to help feed bacteria and they lower your nitrate & phosphate. You can just dose the bacteria itself with the skimmer off for a while, let it work and then turn it back on to export the bacteria that have consumed the N & P and it’s more cost effective. But what people heavily took away was that this ratio is the key to success and it has to be achieved in the same fashion as he described or the same as they were told by someone else. Now you get statements like “everything will die if you try to run a system with zero nutrients” and they don’t even understand the nature of differences between a natural reef that is very low in nutrients and a reef aquarium and they think that it’s this ratio and process is what creates success in every reef tank.

 

[RockBox13]

“Michael Paletta profiled a few industry leaders back in 2017 (Sprung, Joshi, WWC, Jason Fox) and averaged their tank parameters. Notice that they're running what was once considered extremely high values of No3 and Po4:
When I averaged out all of the numbers the values were pretty close to those of NSW. Alk was 8.19, Ca 419. Mg 1361, NO3 18.77, PO4 .18, Sr 8.6 and temp 77.”
Natural Sea Water has no where near that amount of Nitrate and Phosphate and completely missed the role of nitric oxide and Nitrate reductase and how a Nitrite can become a Nitrate by the process of oxidation and similarly, a nitrate can become a Nitrite by the process of reduction. It’s that process of Nitrate producing Nitrite that keeps coming up time and time again on top of low alkalinity, boosting the bacterial population with poison like Methanol, increased acidification rate driving low pH swings, not dosing beneficial bacteria or having macroalgae to compete for the nutrients in the built up detritus and excrement in an un vacuumed substrate feeding nuisance algae, Cyanobacterias, Dinoflagellates and Diatoms if there is Silica in the water.
Some Reefers have had the experience of being able to have many people with those problems making their tank look bad, frustrating them and not responding to their efforts to fix the problems. I was able to figure certain things out because I have done thousands of water tests on hundreds of tanks and I have been able to communicate with those people and get information that was always adding to my knowledge and understanding of tanks with many different types of setups and equipment and get a way better overview of the system as a whole and eliminate parts that weren’t useful, add equipment or supplements to help, adjust temperature and increase oxygen with airflow, what foods to use and anything else. It’s crazy to me to see someone with corals dying and the pH is at 8.1 dipping down to 7.8, dKH is at 8, magnesium is 1200, light intensity isn’t sufficient and all the “helpful” responses ask no questions, they just point to Phosphate and Nitrate levels where now all of a sudden if there’s a “swing” in N or P levels or Alkalinity is 10 or above that’s the cause for corals literally having the flesh of Acropora tissue disintegrating so fast, you can see it peeling off the skeleton? People then just give their anecdotes about how their pH and Alk are low in their tanks, so it has to be something other than that in a different one.
There are very intelligent people being swayed by anecdotal evidence and personal accounts because they interpreted this new style is used purposefully by the best people with the best looking corals Paletta has ever seen and that’s a powerful statement for most people because the guy is awesome and has a great rep, used to rock a mullet that was a flattop up front, has a degree from Yale and is the director of cancer detecting/monitoring equipment department for a huge corporation. I don’t disagree with him on this subject. What I disagree with is the people who have taken that information and reduced it to a simplicity that should be applied to any aquarium regardless of other factors or information about the system or the person’s capabilities. I’ve spent more than my 10,000 hours over the years trying to understand what happens in that box of rocks that makes us so happy when it looks good and downright upset when things go wrong that we can’t understand. Thousands and thousands of complete reef tests of so many different people’s setups and displays and personal tanks of my own taught me in a different way what to do to help others Being able to have friendships with people and getting their feedback, their subsequent test results and observations over many years, pictures and proof of their success and failures that have continually helped reinforce my beliefs of how and why I deal with issues for each and every aquarium individually to have those little reefs we create look good because it makes you happy and that makes me happy and satisfies my soul in a way that keeps me alive. You can’t imagine what I have lost because of this hobby and my dedication/obsession with it and it’s not even close. I’d go back and never buy that tank that started all this if it would bring back what I lost. I’m in Limbo. Lost in Purgatory. Time only moves forward. I won’t ever get anything I lost back and this knowledge and expertise I traded it for is rejected by people who set up their first tank a couple years ago who never tested another person’s water, read the books or became responsible for making their living by helping people care for that f’ing box of rocks that makes us both happy and I’m miserable for it.

 

[RockBox13]

@CKW
And the puppy thing was in reference to the man’s wife who had a fish die and hoped to maybe get some help by posting a picture for a “post Morten” to get some guidance. Then people reacted harshly to the situation, because they look at fish as a pet just like a puppy or a kitty. That’s not what she intended and she probably felt terrible. There is a huge problem the hobby has with the ethics of so many unqualified people looking to make a profit from selling fish or coral. The people who should be the ones to educate customers and test water to make sure that the living creatures they are selling go to someone who is prepared and a tank that isn’t going to stress a fish to death are at your LFS. How is the hobby at that level failing to help people before and after the point of sale? The people have likely been in to discuss purchasing an aquarium a few times and if it’s their first tank that ends up being a mess because they were told that they didn’t need a skimmer or have to do water changes, how to test and adjust the pH or even have test kits, that’s not a recipe for success and happiness for anyone starting out or the fish, inverts and coral.