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- Dec 9, 2016
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It still all boils down to the way we all personally percieve things either way you look at it.I get it’s for the sake of beginners however, a lot of the expert/difficult level fish are from WAY back when there was only one or two successes per year. We could bump the difficulty of a lot of the fish we own now such as the CBB to moderate. Also a lot of fish are called expert due to how little we know about them, this is one of the reasons fish in the genus Hoplolatilus are labelled expert only. Yes shipping is also an issue for fish in that genus however, once you get passed that they’re easy as ever.
But again, “Expert” leads you to believe that only the best of us should be keeping this fish, yes with some fish I know that is true but with a lot of the expert fish, it just isn’t true. I’ve had experience with a lot of the “Expert level” and “Difficult level” fish, after they were settled they were easy as ever. A few of the ones I worked with :
Lythrypnus dilla - Difficult
Acanthurus achilles - Expert
Hoplolatilus chlupatyi - Expert
Hoplolatilus starcki - Expert
Hoplolatilus purpureus - Expert
Chelmon rostratus - Difficult
Chelmon marginalis - Difficult
You say the Twin Spot Goby is expert but the mandarin is easy… They have the same diet so how is one easy and the other expert?
But what MAKES a reefer a “Novice” or “Begginer” or “Expert” because I can tell you now, I have seen novice reefers with TONS of information on certain fish. I’m certainly not an expert and have kept many of these fish alive and thriving in a tank under 6 months old. My CBB went in when my tank was 4 months old, My radiant went in when the tank was 5 months old, My leopard went into my nano when that was at 7 months. 2 years later in went the tilefish and 2 months and 1 day later, he is thriving. My tank is only 2 years old and my nano isn’t even 1 year old.
You assume many people don’t do research? Why is that? I didn’t do a ton of research on my “expert” level radiant however, I still got it and took that risk and 2 years later it thrives. I think the reason why people don’t research is because there is NEVER a straight answer. Maybe if we gave out more straight answers to questions asked then more people would understand it. Or if we got more information of the care of certain difficult/expert fish more people would see how other hobbyists care for it and probably try to do the same or similar.
This is how I feel about them but also I think that some of the fish should really be dragged down in the “levels” of hardiness, I have had to tackle some “Easy” fish that are almost impossible to keep alive and alot of “Hard” fish that thrive from day one.
Here’s just two of the “Hard” fish that thrived from day one:
Hoplolatilus chlupatyi
Halichoeres iridis
Like your copperband experience - As someone that works within the hobby too i would say its still a fish that dies more often than it survives, even now when it has a much better survival rate in captivity. Thats my experience of it in the hobby. Yours may well be very different but in my eyes if its still dieing more than its surviving then that EXPERT tag needs to stay if it has the chance of "scaring" off a few newcomers to the hobby in buying. If it was labelled MODERATE theres a good chance many more would buy it and realistically, thats many more dieing.
I do still get your point - And ive kept plenty of EXPERT level fish that i wouldnt necessarilly call expert but when you see the number of fish that meet their demise in this hobby, having a few extra EXPERT tags to make people think twice before buying is a benefit in my eyes. That tag may well stop a few impulse buys and in turn some bad decisions.
I do have a bit of firsthand experience in this - I own/created a fairly popular mobile application for logging that includes an encyclopedia of a large number of fish in this hobby. I classify these species by care level too and this was actually done via first hand experiences of a large group of people in the hobby, rather than just old reports from a long time ago. I took the approach that calling a species more difficult than it might necessarily be now days is a safer bet than telling people its easier than it might be....We could have 10 Mandarins for example, but only 3 proved very difficult to get to feed and ended up dieing. Does that mean its an easy to keep fish because 7 of them fed right away or does it mean its a difficult to keep fish because 3 refused to eat completely? We sided with calling it difficult in the hope it made people research more and think twice about if they can give it what it needs before buying it and finding out the hard way.
With such a huge amount of easy to keep fish that rarely give anyone any drama when housed correctly i think its the right thing to have a small number labelled for EXPERTS even if it isnt necessarily the case, all the time.