I don’t disagree with that first part. Assessing one’s “ resume” (a complex mix of different things for different people and fields of advice) is an important way, and likely the best way to start to assess the likelihood of misinformation.
I just don’t think looking at a tank they happen to keep provides this info. Perhaps if the tank is a disaster, it’s a warning sign, but even then it really doesn’t demonstrate that they aren’t highly knowledgeable. But more importantly, just looking at a tank that may follow a cook book recipe for success says nothing about their ability to give advice on anything except how to follow that recipe.
I just don’t think there is any easy answer.
If someone says something that seems sketchy to me, what do I do? It is not to look to find a picture of their tank. I cannot think of a time I ever did that over decades of seeing sketchy comments. What I do instead is look to see what other folks are saying on the same topic, either reefers I respect, outside the hobby experts who clearly are expected to know what they are saying, publications by reputable institutions )in and out of the hobby) etc.
Let’s take an example. I consider the idea that shrimp need iodine in the water to be misinformation, yet in the past and perhaps today it was often repeated by people with great tanks. They read it, maybe saw shrimp molt after dosing something with iodine it it, and were convinced.
Thinking it might be sketchy (shrimp seemed fine in my tank when I dosed iodine, and also when I did not dose and levels dropped considerably. , I looked deeper. I found respected reefers who never dosed iodine also had thriving shrimp. When looking outside the hobby, I found info that I think clearly outweighed nice looking tanks: nowhere in the entire shrimp aquaculture industry could I find any mention whatsoever of iodine dosing into shrimp ponds being necessary or useful.
I think the iodine conversation is a great example of why tank results are not always directly tied to the quality of information being shared. Sometimes misinformation becomes widely accepted simply because it is repeated often enough.
My council on this topic is founded upon a personal breakthrough. When I stopped trying to vet every answer and started vetting the people giving the answers everything got a lot easier and the tank thrived.
Local club members were the first example. Credibility started with the results they could show in person, but the real credibility came from how many other reefers credited their success to that person’s counsel. That changed everything for me. I stopped listening to everyone and started listening to a select few.
Then came
reef conferences, speakers, and authors. In many cases, the type of tank they had was not relevant. What mattered was their dedication to their field, their focus on data, research, biology, chemistry, and results instead of internet opinion.
These people referred me to your (RHF) articles. Once I started reading them, it felt like, “Where has this been all my life?” It was a relief to find answers instead of opinions. Detailed science, high standards, and a willingness to help hobbyists directly by being accessable set a new bar for what reefing information could be.
Randy, you may not know this, but for years at
BRS I printed every article of yours I could find. Along with other resources, we built a training stack of around 100 articles, and yours made up more than half of it. We created tests around them and used them in weekly customer service training. Promotions were tied to demonstrated understanding of those materials. I wanted anyone calling
BRS to get the right answer the first time, and your work was one of the foundations of that effort. A lot of hobbyists who had a good experience with
BRS CS owe part of that to you.
Coral farms taught me another lesson. When I met the
WWC team, I realized perfect science was not always the goal because there are so many unknowns in reefing. Repeatable results were the goal. Brilliant coloration, fast growth, low mortality, and methods that worked repeatedly. Many of the Coral farmers fail and succeed more in a week than most hobbyists do in a lifetime. When I applied their lessons, they worked. Understanding why they worked became the new pursuit.
The same thing happened with
Elliot at Marine Collectors. He handles more fish in a week than I will in a lifetime. His approach is biology based, but also grounded in testing methods until he finds what works repeatedly. When something does not work for certain fish, he adapts.
People debate fish disease, diet, aggression, and habitat endlessly. Even the thought leaders disagree, often starkly. Watch the average QT thread and it is easy to see why newer reefers struggle to
separate information from disinformation. For me, being technically right in every debate matters less than the fact that Elliot’s counsel has worked for me repeatedly, including with animals many people struggle to keep. He has never given me a reason to doubt him so I skip many of these endless debates or attempting to decipher information from misinformation.
Ultimately, I credit much of my own reefing success to learning how to listen to people with vastly more experience than me. Learning that baseline knowledge is the baseline to developing the skill required to identify misinformation in the future.
As someone who has been a common source of reefing information, I cannot help but apply this question to myself. What was the balance of information versus misinformation in my own YouTube and video content? That is a heavy question. When I retired from
BRStv, people seeking counsel had watched more than 100,000,000 of our videos, with more than 300,000 unique reefers watching globally each month. Right or wrong that reach is going to have far reaching impacts.
I would like to believe the vast majority of that counsel was at minimum materially or directionally correct, meaning it helped produce the intended result. Feedback and data supported that it was, but I have certainly been wrong at times. I only knew what I knew at the time.
Knowing "my opinion" can't always be right, I tried to add accountability what I was doing by documenting build series, bench testing gear, adding data, and showing real outcomes rather than just sharing my opinions. We can debate the individual thousands of pieces of advice in those series, but the results of the people who used them will always matter most.
The series that ended in big wins felt great, but I think both I and the audience often learned more when something that should have worked did not. Showing those failures was not always easy, but documenting the journey forced evolution. So being wrong was sometimes the best possible outcome.
In the end. From a scientific approach I do think that vetting all the relevant answers does produce the most accurate results. However vetting the people giving answers may provide the fastest progress. For those that share that approach the relevant resume’ is the first step to vetting the people. You are right that it is not always just the tanks they produce.
