THE BLAME GAME: Are we too quick to blame others? Maybe we should look in the mirror.

[sp1187]

True, but letting others know of both your positive & negative experiences with a company, product, etc. helps to guide their steps. When a consensus builds we know which ones to rely upon, and which ones to avoid. For any company getting the finger, do whatever it takes to get the thumbs up instead.

"pointing the finger" to blame someone or something is completely different, in my opinion, to giving a negative review on a product that doesn't perform to what it was stated to do.
my build thread has a couple of "failed" reviews.

 

[jcolliii]

Stuff has only so much life in it. Blaming even a robustly made piece of equipment for failing is pointless. I have a backup for *everything* in my system and in some cases a redundant system. My heater, for example - I have an eheim jaeger - one of the highest regarded heaters out there. It's on an inkbird set so that the inkbird allows a few degrees of 'leeway' for the heater thermostat. I test my inkbird with an external highly accurate thermometer (several, actually) and found that the inkbird is off by about 0.4 degrees. My ATO pump has floats to stop if from pumping all the time, but I also have it on a timer to come on for one minute 2x per day. Redundancy and failproofing your tank is your friend, and your responsibility. Blaming others is a character flaw on your part. Unless someone breaks in to your house and dumps your entire alk container into your tank or takes a baseball bat to it.

 

[Dana Riddle]

Now don't get mad at me on this one. I've thought about this one for a while, put it on a list, but never posted it because I didn't want it to go off the rails so to speak! But I think we're all adult enough to discuss this topic without it getting personal. So let me preface this with that. Let's keep names, company names, political affiliation, political terms etc. out of this topic please. Ok here we go...

I'm guilty first and foremost. When something goes bad in life that the first reaction is often to look for blame outside of ourselves. Now let's apply that to reefing. Something goes bad, tank crashes, algae takes over, fish dies, whatever it may be, we look to blame. We look to blame the vendor, we look to blame the product, we look to blame the equipment and seldom does it dawn on us that we may be the one to blame. Maybe you went to fast, maybe you didn't buy the right equipment, maybe you didn't acclimate properly, maybe your light settings are terrible, maybe you missed a step, etc! Maybe, maybe, maybe...

WARNING: Before you read the next line, PUT YOUR BIG KID PANTS ON!
No. I am the master of the glass box and its inhabitants. If something goes wrong and I fail to accept responsibility, have I learned anything?

Let's talk about this today and hopefully learn to take a look in the mirror before we go blaming others for mistakes that may very well be our own. It's unhealthy to always blame others and live with a victim's mentality. Maybe we can grow from this discussion! So the question is this.

In this hobby are we too quick to blame others, or other things when something goes wrong? What are your thoughts?

 

[fredk]

You can blame me if you like. My Wife does it all the time.

Yeah, but your wife is right. We're just random dudes on the internet. I'll just stick to blaming my ex.

 

[fredk]

Personally, I blame the internets... and product reliability (yeah, I just wrote that).

When I was a young lad, there was no internet. You went to a store to buy stuff and you went back to the same store when there were issues. Try saying some of the things written on the internet in a face to face conversation. Bet you can't do it.

Its kind of like when you said to your parents: "Well he started it." Or, like when you start to go off the rails with your friends and they get that look.

On the internet, you can always find someone to buy into your craziest ideas.

Next. Remember when cars had flat tires at least twice a year and you really did need a tuneup once a year? Now, you just hop in, turn the key and go... for years, and years, and years...

Cars are really expensive and sold in a really big market. Aquarium equipment is still pretty cheap and sold to a very small market, but we've become a little unrealistic in our expectations of performance on consumer equipment.

I would love to see an aquarium controller that is dead on reliable for years, but I probably wouldn't like the price tag. I'm pretty sure you could base something like this off a real industrial plc, but those things are not cheap.

 

[Butcher333]

I feel that nothing in this hobby is cheap. Regardless of how exotic, I could probably buy an endangered mountain lion for less than it would cost just to set up a tank let alone that 1” piece of Coral for $499. My one gripe I’ve had and do feel blame can rightfully be placed on is the sale of coral with baddies on it. I feel that for the price. The stress of dipping and quarantining should fall on the vendor. Clean healthy coral is all that should be offered at the prices they come at. Red Bugs and flat worms should not be something that passes on to the consumer and then blame them for not being more thorough and failing to stress the s#%t out of that expensive thing we just bought and place it in a sub par environment for weeks or months before being placed in the ideal home we’ve spent so much time and money creating. LoL. This is something they need to quit blaming the consumer for. I can’t think of anything else though. Haha. You can control most everything else. A lot of things are overpriced. Sure. Like skimmers.
fail safes and redundancies. Control control control. If only I had had an alarm or notification that my heater failed to shutoff. Or that my power went out. We plan for this. as has been said. When bugs however are shipped all over the country the damage can be in the billions easily with all of the future sales lost from those who throw in the towel or not to mention the billions lost in livestock.

 

[PurpleMonsterSlayer]

I would say this would still be my fault. I don't plug my return pump into controllers, I also only plug half my powerheads into them. Anytime we allow one source to be able to fail and crash our entire systems that's on us. Or at least that's how I see it. It's my own fault.

well your return pump isn't plugged in to the controller but is connected with a usb cable and your wav makers are supposed to be hooked up to you power bar control by your controller because you cant just plug them into a regular outlet. this being said the controller failing shouldn't effect the other two but it does. I guess you can say its the users fault for trusting a brand

 

[JCOLE]

Honestly, I always blame myself. One reason why this hobby is so stressful to me is if it goes south then it is all my fault.