Good Help,bad Help, Who To Trust...

[Aquamaniac]

Hi

I know this probably will come a bit of topic.
We've had topics here discussing how LFS sometimes give bad advice to hobby newcomers in other to get some extra profit.
We also discussed how good for us is today with the internet and all the information around,but just for newcomers,before taking some guys advice or tutorial do some research yourself.
Today while watching some videos on youtube i came upon a video showing how to clean a fluval 305 filter.
The person in the video acted like all professional and i know what i am doing,for the newbs.
So it surprised me that the guy suddenly criticizes the filter saying that it's impossible to open and that he always has to use a screwdriver to do it, fluvals are actually very easy to open for anyone that never had one,you just push the locking handles down and outwards and the filter just pops open.
Well a bit skeptic i still gave the guy a benefit of the doubt. Maybe is filter is just broken i thought. But then he starts cleaning the media, and first he used tap water instead of tank water. Second he disposes of alot of it and replaces with new.All this while he is saying on the video that it's how its done and that he does it for years.
To be honest i wouldn't care and was about to close the page when i noticed some of the comments, basically it was all newbs saying how helpful he was and that they were starting a new tank and that he was a great help.
So i scrolled down a bit and finally found some experienced guys explaining him all about cycling the tank and using tank water to clean it to keep the bacteria alive.
The guys reply was in a very rude manner "I don't care about bacteria i've been running this sucessfull tank for a long time", not even worth mentioning that some guys tried to explain how to open a fluval.
Most of you are probably thinking why am i posting this.
Simple i was lucky to come it to the hobby in a new age, when i started the internet was changing everything in fishkeeping and fortunately for me i was lucky to find forums like this and other with people with real knowledge and the will to share it.
I do not pretend to know everything about fishkeeping, far from it so when i have to give information to new guys i only do it if i really know what i am talking about. And if i am not sure i'll research before telling others what to do.
Especially in fishkeeping where almost everything is expensive.
To all the newcomers make sure you research as much as possible before investing in fishkeeping, and in case of needing help use forums like this and other most of the people around here have alot of experience and learned from their own mistakes.
To the more experienced guys i'm sure that like me you have stumbled upon cases like this before.
Why not discuss it?For sure we can't do anything but we can make newcomers aware that despite all the information out there not all of it is good information.

 

[Prime Ordeal]

I can put that more simply: don't believe anything you read or watch on the internet (or anywhere else for that matter).

Do your own research and come at things in an informed manner.

With regard to this guy though, it may be that his water supply has no chlorine or chloramine in it, in which case cleaning the filter in tap water is fine.

 

[Curiosity101]

I don't really know what there is to discuss to be honest. It's much like the lfs's if they ever give bad advice. Why as a new keeper would you ignore their advice unless you know better. Everyone just has to try to apply a bit of sense to what people are telling you. I'm always a bit skeptical when people tell me things I don't know. I try not to be too skeptical cause I'm aware it often comes across as arrogance and 'I know more than you so why should I just accept what you're saying'. When in actual fact, unless they're a genuine proven 'expert' all I want is to double check that what they're saying is correct.

Some people don't have that inbuilt skepticism and are very trusting. Which is great... until it's something important like starting a tank... buying a car... etc etc.

You'll find cowboys pretty much everywhere in life... it's up to people to judge for themselves. And we'll all still be here when it all goes belly up to pick up the pieces and to try to help them start over. All you can do is encourage them to 'pass on the message' so to speak of researching before you buy and that forums like this exist.

Side note... we could all go and find this particular video and post comments... Although... I might get my hands slapped for suggesting that
Edit: for the record prime ordeal is correct. If the guys tank genuinely has been trouble free for as long as he's being doing his maintenance then we can't claim that he's 'doing it wrong' so to speak. What we can stress is that A) you don't need a screw driver B) tap water in most areas can/will kill of bacteria C) bacteria is the only way to keep ammonia and nitrites down and safegaurd your fish. So chucking/killing them isn't a smart piece of advice to be giving to people.

 

[CezzaXV]

That's what I love about forums. When you read a book, article or watch a video, you're getting one person's possibly wrong opinion. When you ask for many people's opinions, you're more likely to get something that's right.

 

[Aquamaniac]

With regard to this guy though, it may be that his water supply has no chlorine or chloramine in it, in which case cleaning the filter in tap water is fine.

Yes we could give the benifit of the doubt. But is comments suggest otherwise. He goes far enough to dismiss the need for bacteria to survive to keep the tank healthy.

I don't really know what there is to discuss to be honest. It's much like the lfs's if they ever give bad advice. Why as a new keeper would you ignore their advice unless you know better. Everyone just has to try to apply a bit of sense to what people are telling you. I'm always a bit skeptical when people tell me things I don't know. I try not to be too skeptical cause I'm aware it often comes across as arrogance and 'I know more than you so why should I just accept what you're saying'. When in actual fact, unless they're a genuine proven 'expert' all I want is to double check that what they're saying is correct.

Some people don't have that inbuilt skepticism and are very trusting. Which is great... until it's something important like starting a tank... buying a car... etc etc.

You'll find cowboys pretty much everywhere in life... it's up to people to judge for themselves. And we'll all still be here when it all goes belly up to pick up the pieces and to try to help them start over. All you can do is encourage them to 'pass on the message' so to speak of researching before you buy and that forums like this exist.

Side note... we could all go and find this particular video and post comments... Although... I might get my hands slapped for suggesting that
Edit: for the record prime ordeal is correct. If the guys tank genuinely has been trouble free for as long as he's being doing his maintenance then we can't claim that he's 'doing it wrong' so to speak. What we can stress is that A) you don't need a screw driver B) tap water in most areas can/will kill of bacteria C) bacteria is the only way to keep ammonia and nitrites down and safegaurd your fish. So chucking/killing them isn't a smart piece of advice to be giving to people.

I left a couple of comments regarding the tap water and opening the filter but as soon as i realized that people had done it before and he had in a rude manner dismissed i did not bother to lose more time with it.

To be honest the topic was more to give newcomers an example, i know we do give them often around here but in my opinion its never enough.
I did get alot of bad advice in my time but i was smarter not to trust it without searching myself, and for the most of it i ended up realizing that i would be doing idiot mistakes or spending my hard earned money on thing i did not need.

 

[Aquamaniac]

That's what I love about forums. When you read a book, article or watch a video, you're getting one person's possibly wrong opinion. When you ask for many people's opinions, you're more likely to get something that's right.

Well said.

 

[Curiosity101]

When I said I didn't know what there is to discuss, all I mean is that unless we pinned a topic where people purely reported sightings of 'bad' advice then I can't see how this can be helpful to people.

And the idea of proposing to pin a thread full of bad advice that people have seen/found seems a bit wrong. And very negative. People don't need to go and read the ins and outs. It gets mentioned when you're trying to help someone anyways. Unlike with cycling I couldn't see myself going 'Oh well alot of people get given bad advice. See my link for our list of actual bad advice that has been given to people over the years'.

Unless of course we could come up with an amusing/sweet list. A bit like 'kids say the funniest things' but fish 'experts' giving funny bad advice. However that'd be alot of work and wouldn't really serve the original purpose. lol.

 

[Aquamaniac]

When I said I didn't know what there is to discuss, all I mean is that unless we pinned a topic where people purely reported sightings of 'bad' advice then I can't see how this can be helpful to people.

And the idea of proposing to pin a thread full of bad advice that people have seen/found seems a bit wrong. And very negative. People don't need to go and read the ins and outs. It gets mentioned when you're trying to help someone anyways. Unlike with cycling I couldn't see myself going 'Oh well alot of people get given bad advice. See my link for our list of actual bad advice that has been given to people over the years'.

Unless of course we could come up with an amusing/sweet list. A bit like 'kids say the funniest things' but fish 'experts' giving funny bad advice. However that'd be alot of work and wouldn't really serve the original purpose. lol.

Honestly it wasn't my idea also. Open the eyes of newcomers yes, but not by offending other people.
I did not share the video just because of that, he as alot of criticizing comments in there already if anyone from here manages to stumble upon it by all means criticize but it does not look in any way nice or right if we all went there just to make a point.

Just like LFS we usually do pass information around us about good shops and bad shops but we don't all go to the shops door with signs saying it is a bad shop.
But by talking about we increase awareness.

 

[elmo666]

This guy is clearly a jerk and his advice could lead alot of inexperienced fish-keepers to lose fish and become distraught. As for cleaning media under the tap, that is never a good idea, regardless of whether chlorine is present or not. Same wth the bacterial media, no need to replace that unless it is so clogged it is unaffective, which really shouldn't happen if the mechanical media is doing it's job properly. Sadly, in our search for info we can tend to rely on the internet far too much, as anyone can post just about anything they like on a given subject. The answer is simple: Get as much info as you can, consider it, then go for the middle ground of opinions which should be well supported.

 

[Scales9]

I consider myself a proper newb, even though I have had a tank for almost a year, upgraded it to a bigger tank this year and as we now have more fish Ect have been doing a lot more research than when we just had the small tank, I never knew that you were not supposed to clean the filter media in tap water for example.... So perhaps instead of a thread containing stories of really bad advice that we have all been given it may be an idea to pin a thread containing examples of things never to do.Example Never clean your filter media in tap water Never replace all the media at once Ect Ect.
I personally like reading about all the bad advice that is given i find it helps me determine if people ( especially the lfs staff) know what they are talking about.

 

[FishBlast]

The first wrong advice I've received was from my mother. She has kept fish in incredibly small tanks while she was younger (I wasn't even born then). She didn't use a filter either and she used to change their water between once a month and once a week. No live plants or substrate or anything. And overstocked with swordtails, guppies, platies and angelfish. She told me how she would leave home for a month or more and come back and that her fish survived and didn't die. (she used this to mock my daily water changing during the fish-in cycling I've started this year thanks to the advice from the people on this forum).

The second wrong advice I've received was from a friend of mine who dumped a 50L or so tank on me, filled with a soup of fish... Some that shouldn't even live in there because they started hunting down the other fish. She told me to change water once a week / when it gets cloudy. And I did so for 15 years since then...

The third wrong advice I've received was from a market shop that told my dad that swordtails are fit for 20 LITER tanks and higher.

While I was a kid, I couldn't do any research, as I didn't have internet, nor did my parents buy me any books on fishkeeping. They thought it was ok to just change water once a week. Dad did buy me 2 filters, but I didn't know how to use them properly (one made such a racket... and this one I have now didn't spray bubbles correctly back then, until I learned how to set it to do that barely this year when I started using it again).
When I did get the internet, I used it to research for school stuff, didn't even bother to research about fish since I wasn't losing them left and right until I left them with my dad because I went to grandma's place.

What brought me here? Buying three swordtails and asking about their compatibility with my hoplo. LOL...

 

[OldMan47]

I regard advice from my LFS much the same way I would regard advice from an auto parts store if I was rebuilding an engine. I listen just in case the guy happens to know something but more often I find that he really only knows how to match a part with a particular engine. Likewise a LFS employee may well know the price of his fish and the aggressiveness rating on it but he is not an informed hobbyist who really knows something about fish. Like for instance which fish show aggressiveness to a particular other species. Dedicated hobbyists are probably among the best references for that kind of information. On TFF we try to provide a place where exactly that kind of information can be exchanged freely. I am not quite as skeptical as PO and I do accept that people here have the best interests of the fish at heart. I do indeed hold a significant degree of skepticism when I see a post that contradicts my own experiences though. In that case, I make my best effort to decide to either believe the seeming contradictory advice or I find another answer that works for me and fits all known facts. I am learning constantly and look forward to doing so forever in this hobby.