Where did you learn your craft?

gwand

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There are so many excellent, knowledgeable, creative aquarists on this forum. I was wondering where people learned the most about this craft. Was it trial and error, mentors, fish clubs, fish forums and other Internet sites, utubes, books or any combination of these possibilities?
 
Internet and experiences. Some stuff if I could only find vague info, I find it's worth the trial and error. And mistakes provide valuable lessons to improve yourself as you come along. Talking with others is also very useful, because people experience different things, and things written down are subject to change or evolve with time.
 
We winged it through library books at first (early 80s). Then joined a local club & learned some more & killed lots of plants. Then we had extremely slow dial up internet & with extreme patience learned a little bit more. Lots through trial & error with some heavy skepticism of LFS, old tech & internet "experts". It seemed they always wanted to sell us stuff. My husband is sorta stuck in the days of UGF & our easy breeding CA/SA cichlids but I've moved on in many ways. LED lighting, yes! A plant club that lets me try many different things. Trading fish & discovering new species of both fish & plants! Yes!

I feel like I've turned a corner, but maybe not up to all the new stuff available. I'm low tech & proud of it! I have 20+ year-old filters & tanks that still work well. It's not just a matter of cheapness or $$ spent, but that I can make them work for me & my current tanks, fish & plants. I'm always open to learning more even when I use the "old" names for newly renamed species, lol. Slowly evolving might describe me best :)
 
I started to raise my game by a combination of reading and meeting elderly mentors who shared their expertise. Then I read, and read and read for a long time, with learning about fishkeeping operating as escapism, probably as people use Gaming now. I didn't have many tanks and was in a high stress lifestyle, and that was my bubble I could look at.
The next level for me came with fish club membership, where I met an entire other wave of older people with cool projects they were happy to discuss. Then I met a wave of people younger than me who also knew their stuff, and it was the exchange with other people that taught me. I'm still not an expert, but I can discuss with the big kids. There's an Irish expression, an old one that says I may not be a scholar, but I've met the scholars on their way out of school.
Now, using the net, I get to talk with a lot of the real experts. I look for pdfs of scientific papers that interest me. I still read everything I can.

In many ways, the net can make us choose ignorance. It's a rigid teacher. You have to know what you want to learn to be able to feed the right questions into a search engine. I think we still can profit from older books like the Baensch Atlas series of of 40 years ago, as they show us a breadth we may not know exists. They're unbeatable bathroom reading, species by species - even the ones you will never see can teach you general ideas you might choose to use.

People aren't unlike the internet. You have to learn a little to access a lot. If you go to conventions, conferences, club speakers, etc, you can learn a lot. This forum is a hybrid. You can read past threads, or talk with people. What they do or have done in their lives crosses over with what we discuss here. How does a medical researcher approach things? A teacher? Or, when I got into fish, how did a factory worker do research? Aquarists come from all walks of life and all social classes, and we're all different. We need to listen to each other and be open to adapting.

My first mentors were generally wrong in a lot of what they taught. They were chasing the balanced aquarium, and it's a diehard myth in our hobby. Learning a system that didn't work was no problem. They shared how they were trying to make it work. Plus they discussed how it wasn't working, and in the end, were the ones who started us on the water changes approach. You have to avoid all gurus. Your peers decide who an expert is, and those who announce themselves as experts are probably over-estimating their expertise. There are too many brilliant minds doing things we have to adapt to for anyone to rest on whatever they see as their laurels. You just have to try to keep up.

You meet on the common ground and see what you can learn. Books, articles, papers, conferences, clubs, cold beers, going fishing, listening - it all adds up if you want it to. It's the same as anything else.
 
Your peers decide who an expert is, and those who announce themselves as experts are probably over-estimating their expertise.
Yeah this is so true. What I've seen are folks who are into the hobby and happy to share, and others who tell you they know a lot and then get angry when you question something they tell you. Someone who gets defensive about a bit of knowledge that you question is not really all that sure about it- they just want YOU to be sure they are an expert.

I learned about aquarium keeping from the neighbor who gave me his old tank that had a metal lid with an incandescent bulb with exposed wires LOL. Also at the "Love for Sale" pet store in Stone Mt GA where I got all the fish when I was a kid (I never questioned that name then, but now ....what were they thinking???)

For years that's all I knew and I admit I killed some fish along the way just not knowing what was really going on. Finally in Covid it hit me that there's probably a lot of info on the internet about fish keeping. OMG that's where it took off.

I found tons of conflicting info from seemingly well-informed people, a site that dispelled a lot of myths and gave me plenty of centralized good info (aquariumscience.org- I know it's not perfect, but I like his approach even though he tends to have an edge- he HATES Seachem LOL), and then I found this site. You guys have generally not been imperious in your answers and have been generally just interested in discussing and helping. Most important (for me, anyway), you haven't made a hobby of picking apart whatever's wrong with what I discuss or show.

Some folks out there just live to find whatever thing you're doing that is not in line with what they know to be the unbreakable rules of fish-keeping. Drives me nuts. Makes me want to go get a betta fish and put it in a baby food jar- "look at my new betta tank!!!"

Lately I've purchased a couple of books on plants. Fun to read through- haven't come close to finishing either- it's tough slogging when they get into the more technical aspects of the plants, but still interesting- especially when I find one I'd like to keep.

Great topic, thanks!!!
 
I feel that I was fortunate coming into the hobby when I did as an enthusiastic youngster in 1965 . There were a lot of pet shops and several specialty tropical fish shops in my town then . It was the tail end of the Golden Age of fish keeping . My own enthusiasm as a youngster and meeting old guys with set ups that I could only dream about really fueled my interest . The local aquarium society was running at full steam back then and several of the kids in my neighborhood had aquariums or their folks did . The school had a nice aquarium and there were several wild creeks in the then underdeveloped neighborhood I lived in . I was swimming in everything fish . My Dad was very encouraging of my budding interest and it was just a perfect time and place . I got a subscription to Tropical Fish Hobbyist in grade school and my Dad bought me The Innes Book which I practically memorized . What really got me going though was that my best friend , who lived across the alley behind me , was nuttier about fish than I was . We had a little friendly rivalry going that took both of us to new levels . He even MADE me join the American Killifish Association many years later with the express goal of “ making a killie keeper out of me “ as he put it . Friends and associates spur you on better than anything else .
 
The Innes book, like Baensch, helped me a lot. I had an electric guitar, and a garage/punk bandmate who actually had talent and wasn't tone deaf like me. One day he was invited to join a band on the other side of the country and stole my guitar, leaving a copy of the Innes book on the couch in exchange.
That was a message, I suspect, at where my talents might lie.
It was also a great read. A lot of its science was outdated by then, but its enthusiasm and love of these fish was infectious.

People have to meet other people though. If we are talking the craft of fishkeeping, craftspeople learn from other craftspeople. There are 15 or so people who are regulars at our new local club, and I keep hear an amazed comment from them that they've learned more in a few meetings than they had learned in years previous. It's from chatting with each other, face to face.

The hobby is also more like science than it is a rule or belief system. We try things, we experiment, we disagree, we prove some things right and some wrong - some adjust to new learning and some dig in and deny. But ideally, a consensus forms based on practical experience combined with explanations, and we stumble on to the next problem. If someone does the "I'm gonna tell you how it's going to be" thing, I ignore them. If 5 or 6 people are trying to create a different type of aquarium that doesn't appeal to me, and have different experiences and results, that I'll listen to or read because the questions are important.
 
Having an open mind is useful for this hobby, because those younger or newer than you can provide valuable learning lessons to everyone as well. You don't need to be a veteran to the hobby to bring something to the table.

There's been times discussing with folks on one of my fish servers that I've been wrong about something, and they'd provide scientific articles about their points of view and I love it because it gave me the opportunity to learn something new and change my own approach.
 
I'll go with checked a book out at the local library, added in multiple magazines all preinternet stuff and a combination of Q&A anywhere we could ask mixed with trial and error. Just like right now I'm trial and erroring my way thru designing the perfect guppy colony with live plants combo before reproducing it 20 or more times for other color patterns. I decided to go with some giant duckweed so stupid babies have somewhere at the surface to hide in the roots of while at the same time, the plants should block some of the surface from light and take up extra nutrients maybe improving the green water potential headaches. I found 1/2" pvc 90 degree elbos cheap on Amazon in a 30 pack Sunday that are already here and used to make squares about 8" by 12" to float on top the tanks and tubs to keep the duckweed coralled. I made 5 yesterday and if I like it it'll be easy to duplicate but I also stay open to alternatives. I also may work in some salvinia to try on a few to see if it's better. Giant duckweed arrives tomorrow Priority Mail.
 
There are so many excellent, knowledgeable, creative aquarists on this forum. I was wondering where people learned the most about this craft. Was it trial and error, mentors, fish clubs, fish forums and other Internet sites, utubes, books or any combination of these possibilities?
My first tank was a 5 gal which I added black felt on 3 sides and immediately added about 40 Cardinal Tetras, a cheap heater as well as a black light.(it was early 70s lol) I knew nothing but put water in the tank, use a heater, add fish! You can only surmise the result. Two days later I woke up with fried fish! Poor little guys. I’ve kept at it for about 60 years now, learning. I bought the Innes freshwater fish book in 1975 and finally rid myself of the Grimm Reaper feeling. So my suggestion is purchase a Good Book. The web has to many ways to do the same thing for me. I’m 75.
 
My first tank was a 5 gal which I added black felt on 3 sides and immediately added about 40 Cardinal Tetras, a cheap heater as well as a black light.(it was early 70s lol) I knew nothing but put water in the tank, use a heater, add fish! You can only surmise the result. Two days later I woke up with fried fish! Poor little guys. I’ve kept at it for about 60 years now, learning. I bought the Innes freshwater fish book in 1975 and finally rid myself of the Grimm Reaper feeling. So my suggestion is purchase a Good Book. The web has to many ways to do the same thing for me. I’m 75.
My first real aquarium was a five gallon in 1965 and you’d never believe the menagerie I kept in that little thing . Surprisingly none of my fish died by my hand . I don’t know how but I managed not to do certain things . I read the Innes Book every single day and I went to Billings Aquarium Society meetings every month without fail . I was always very careful with my Hartz Mountain heater and monitored my thermometer constantly , a practice I follow to this day . Every morning first thing - read the thermometer and count the fish .
 

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