The Start of Misinformation, Misunderstandings, and Acknowledging Lack of Knowledge

[Paul B]

Livinglife........Oh, I'm just going to call you LL for short. I appreciate you mentioning your age. My Grand Kids are half your age but you sound much older. (That is a compliment, don't get crazy) and you don't come off as arrogant, but even if you did, don't worry about it.

I am 73 and nothing you could say on here or in the street would offend me. (just don't say anything about my Grand Kids.

I have been doing this a long time and have killed more fish than Star Kist tuna which you had to do to get any knowledge. We didn't have silly computers to feed us all this wrong information.

I, like most people feel my ideas and advice is 100% perfect. Of course it is not, )Maybe 43%.) I even disagree with some things I published when the hobby started. I remember once in a paper magazine I wrote that fish could never be immune from parasites because that would be like being immune from bullets.

And now, 50 years later I have fish immune to parasites. Many people will disagree with that statement but that is mainly people who lose fish to parasites.

Anyway, being young doesn't make any one "stupod". I may have been young once, but I forgot.
Also remember, however young you are, I was young longer.

Being young just means you don't have as much "life" experience as an older person.

I feel people have problems with things like fear and being offended is because of life experience or lack of it.

As an example, if you have almost never seen a dead person and you come upon an accident and see a mangled person, that will last in your memory forever and may sicken you. But if you were in heavy combat or an ER doctor, the sight of dead people will mean very little to you.
Just like if you see spots on a fish for the first time, you may run to the Disease forum for help using the title "HELP".

But if you have been doing this for 50 or 60 years, spots will mean nothing.

At my age people have tried to offend me many times. I was a Sargent in the Army and a General Foreman on a construction site in Manhattan for almost 50 years running hundreds of men and have heard every argument and had many arguments including fist fights. Some I won, some I lost. Thats the way we used to solve disagreements. Now we text mean looking Emojis to one another. It's less bloody.

 

[BroccoliFarmer]

Livinglife........Oh, I'm just going to call you LL for short. I appreciate you mentioning your age. My Grand Kids are half your age but you sound much older. (That is a compliment, don't get crazy) and you don't come off as arrogant, but even if you did, don't worry about it.

I am 73 and nothing you could say on here or in the street would offend me. (just don't say anything about my Grand Kids.

I have been doing this a long time and have killed more fish than Star Kist tuna which you had to do to get any knowledge. We didn't have silly computers to feed us all this wrong information.

I, like most people feel my ideas and advice is 100% perfect. Of course it is not, )Maybe 43%.) I even disagree with some things I published when the hobby started. I remember once in a paper magazine I wrote that fish could never be immune from parasites because that would be like being immune from bullets.

And now, 50 years later I have fish immune to parasites. Many people will disagree with that statement but that is mainly people who lose fish to parasites.

Anyway, being young doesn't make any one "stupod". I may have been young once, but I forgot.
Also remember, however young you are, I was young longer.

Being young just means you don't have as much "life" experience as an older person.

I feel people have problems with things like fear and being offended is because of life experience or lack of it.

As an example, if you have almost never seen a dead person and you come upon an accident and see a mangled person, that will last in your memory forever and may sicken you. But if you were in heavy combat or an ER doctor, the sight of dead people will mean very little to you.
Just like if you see spots on a fish for the first time, you may run to the Disease forum for help using the title "HELP".

But if you have been doing this for 40 or 50 years, spots will mean nothing.

At my age people have tried to offend me many times. I was a Sargent in the Army and a General Foreman on a construction site in Manhattan for almost 50 years running hundreds of men and have heard every argument and had many arguments including fist fights. Some I won, some I lost. Thats the way we used to solve disagreements. Now we text mean looking Emojis to one another. It's less bloody.

I miss the older days. The problem, I see, with emojigeddon is there is no finality of a disagreement. It will go back and forth forever with no ‘victor’ whereas with a bloody battle, the disagreement will eventually end. May not be properly decided, but it has been decided and it’s over

 

[thatmanMIKEson]

Older generations (like myself) have much tougher skins than most of the young millennials we encounter here on forums and "IMO" the slightest thing can really offend some people.

I am old and also fought in a war. I am not a war baby like your Grand Mother but I was born right after WW2. It would be impossible to offend me, especially on a fish, hobby forum.

This is a hobby and the definition of a hobby is a pass time, something to fill your hours with enjoyment. It is not something to argue about because it is not that important to anyone except maybe some fish which by the way I eat almost every day.

#experience

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I did a quick scan of this growing thread and I didn't see an image of the Dunning Kruger Effect:

Because keeping aquariums is so complicated, people are at different stages for different topics at the same time!

Jay

 

[BroccoliFarmer]

I did a quick scan of this growing thread and I didn't see an image of the Dunning Kruger Effect:

Because keeping aquariums is so complicated, people are at different stages for different topics at the same time!

Jay

what is the x axis?

 

[CrunchyBananas]

what is the x axis?

knowledge of the subject in question, left is knowing nothing, far right is expert status. Left is where confidence far out weighs ability, and the graph exhibits how the more you learn, the more you realize you don't know, therefore wavering ones previous confidence/brashness/boldness. A lot like the old Bob Dylan lyric:

"Ah, but I was so much older then
I'm younger than that now."

 

[Jay Hemdal]

what is the x axis?

It is supposed to represent actual knowledge level (or competence).

Jay

 

[gbru316]

Gbru316, this is my favorite post of the day. No, Make that the year. Not just because you named models, even though most of them are Supermodels, but the rest of it.

What 97% of people in this hobby do not understand is that it is the bacteria, viruses, funguses and yes, parasites that run our tanks. Supermodels have very little to do with most of it and we are here just to give the bacteria something to make fun of.

There are thousands of types of bacteria. (I don't know the exact number just like I don't know a lot of things) but when we start a tank (and I don't know why most of the threads are about new tanks so we don't know what happened to the old tanks) The different types of bacteria we use (by accident) are the main things that will determine if that tank will be successful or not.

If our tanks crash, part of that is our fault and part of it is because of the bacteria/viruses/parasites we add or don't add at the beginning. The vast majority of people, and you know who you are, are convinced that we definitely need to kill parasites and viruses. Killing is not always the best route. I am a soldier so I have some experience with this.

When we look at a tank we see fish, corals, little Chinese villages, treasure chests with bubbles opening and closing the lid etc. But that is a very small part of the flora and fauna in the tank. If we could see really well, and we can't, we would see the constant battle that is going on between the bacteria, viruses and parasites. They are all always fighting and sometimes you can see the smoke from those battles.

The outcome of those ongoing conflicts is what determines if your tank will be healthy or a continuing concoction of medications, frustrations and holy water.

Then if we (God Forbid) add something that will "annoy" or "Kill" either parasites, bacteria or viruses we cheat and no one likes a cheater. Most of the medications we use to kill parasites will also kill bacteria. Good and bad bacteria. When that happens the viruses get together, have a party and do the macarana, which is why in many of the posts we see someone treating with some medication to try to control some perceived threat and the fish come down with cottony growths, fin rot, dropsy, swim bladder disease or the heartbreak of psoriasis.

When fish were in the sea happily living with every disease known to man along with Supermodels and Jimmy Hoffa they were fine. I have spent countless hours under water for over 50 years and have never seen a sick fish unless it was just bitten in half or someone medicated it. (Well almost never)

Then we put that creature in a tank with very few natural microscopic organisms and feed it with pellets from Walmart which doesn't have the same gut bacteria the fish was living with in the sea and the fishes immunity goes from 100% to 3% so we run out and buy Prizapro to try to cure it which rarely helps because it causes something else.

If we concentrated more on allowing the fishes natural immunity to keep the thing healthy and less on trying to destroy what we feel is bad, many more of us would be successful and less stressed.

Your experience a big part of why I've started collecting for my tank locally. Snails, hermits, macroalgae, etc.

So much of this hobby is based on anecdotal evidence as opposed to "settled science." While we may not understand the exact microbial interactions that lead to 50 years of success, it's hard to argue with that volume of anecdotal evidence.

 

[Paul B]

While we may not understand the exact microbial interactions that lead to 50 years of success,

I don't understand it ether. I "think" my fish are immune because they never get sick. I could be very wrong or very lucky. I am not sure. I "think" my methods work, but maybe my tank would be better if I just did the opposite like George did in a Seinfeld episode. I will never know.

I "think" adding mud from the sea and feeding clams and worms is the best thing since slice bread, but I could be mistaken. I "think" feeding dry flake food and pellets is almost the worst thing you could do. I really am not sure.

I "feel" my fish are immune because of the aquascape I keep and the gut bacteria I feed, but maybe plywood decorations or perhaps crystal ballerina statues would work better. I never tried so I don't know.

I am actually not exactly sure of anything I do or did for the last half century but I know at least some of it was right or almost right. There is an entire plethora of things I have no idea about but I am able to use a combination of experience, gut feeling, SCUBA diving, common sense and street smarts to figure things out and if I am wrong. I will end up with a dead fish. It isn't the end of the world...................Well, for the fish it is.

Thousands of people...OK, dozens of people have argued with me over my methods for decades. I don't know if they are still in the hobby but I am. My tank is by far "not" perfect and certainly not the best looking tank on here. No where close and that is never what I was going for. I want a healthy tank where most things spawn and everything only dies of old age as that is my "only" gauge of "Great Success".

I have failed many times with many creatures. To many to list and I apologize to those animals. But I am Human and all of us Humans make a lot of mistakes. Especially in this hobby.

 

[KrisReef]

Livinglife........Oh, I'm just going to call you LL for short. I appreciate you mentioning your age. My Grand Kids are half your age but you sound much older. (That is a compliment, don't get crazy) and you don't come off as arrogant, but even if you did, don't worry about it.

I am 73 and nothing you could say on here or in the street would offend me. (just don't say anything about my Grand Kids.

I have been doing this a long time and have killed more fish than Star Kist tuna which you had to do to get any knowledge. We didn't have silly computers to feed us all this wrong information.

I, like most people feel my ideas and advice is 100% perfect. Of course it is not, )Maybe 43%.) I even disagree with some things I published when the hobby started. I remember once in a paper magazine I wrote that fish could never be immune from parasites because that would be like being immune from bullets.

And now, 50 years later I have fish immune to parasites. Many people will disagree with that statement but that is mainly people who lose fish to parasites.

Anyway, being young doesn't make any one "stupod". I may have been young once, but I forgot.
Also remember, however young you are, I was young longer.

Being young just means you don't have as much "life" experience as an older person.

I feel people have problems with things like fear and being offended is because of life experience or lack of it.

As an example, if you have almost never seen a dead person and you come upon an accident and see a mangled person, that will last in your memory forever and may sicken you. But if you were in heavy combat or an ER doctor, the sight of dead people will mean very little to you.
Just like if you see spots on a fish for the first time, you may run to the Disease forum for help using the title "HELP".

But if you have been doing this for 50 or 60 years, spots will mean nothing.

At my age people have tried to offend me many times. I was a Sargent in the Army and a General Foreman on a construction site in Manhattan for almost 50 years running hundreds of men and have heard every argument and had many arguments including fist fights. Some I won, some I lost. Thats the way we used to solve disagreements. Now we text mean looking Emojis to one another. It's less bloody.

What I appreciate about Paul the sergeant is that he is very whimsical and poetic in his post communications.

I hated poetry when I was taught it in schools, but as it turned out I think poetically (just don't ask me about my iambic pentameter, somethings are private) but the teachers in school could not connect me to myself with their professional system of indoctrination, normalization, socialization, and memorization techniques that they had been told were the best ways to communicate in a civilized world.

My educational experience included watching a huge kid sitting on top of a tiny kid that was getting fist beaten on the skull while their face was planted into the sidewalk. Every blow was subtracting IQ points from the tiny kids educational future while they were being beaten in school. Did that kid learn that submitting is sometimes the best way to move forward in an argument? I did. The big kid sitting on top was 100% correct at that moment, but that's not what we were discussing, is it?

A person who is trying to communicate information generally does so with the belief that they know the correct answer, or that if they don't their punishment for being wrong is going to be minimal at best. Folks posting on here have reasons to post. Lots of different ones. Some come on here for the social aspect, some to help others, most of us because we are bored with real life and enjoy this distraction.

Look at the last paragraph and dismantle what I wrote. Some was all about me, some was about my life's observations, and some was opinion, likely to be true?, (or not?). Most of the ideas were generalizations, or speculations from how I see things. Opinion, fact, truth are very difficult subjects to tackle. If you think most people think about what they write, or why they write it when posting on here, I say they have to be thinking, but not necessarily are they conscious of their motives. That is my opinion.

The other opinion I have, is that unless people practice what I learned in poetry class, and english, to LOOK at what people write, and try to examine and dismantle the posters thoughts and intentions for writing what they post, then they are likely to believe everything and never know what is true.

Reading and writing communication are art forms, like poetry. Everything I wrote is 100% of what I typed. I hoped to be helpful but poetry and thinking and reading are easy to misunderstand.

My daughter is in labor with Ezra. If I wrote he is my son, instead of I will love him like a son, well folks might conclude I was breaking some of the commandments.

 

[jabberwock]

Gbru316, this is my favorite post of the day. No, Make that the year. Not just because you named models, even though most of them are Supermodels, but the rest of it.

What 97% of people in this hobby do not understand is that it is the bacteria, viruses, funguses and yes, parasites that run our tanks. Supermodels have very little to do with most of it and we are here just to give the bacteria something to make fun of.

There are thousands of types of bacteria. (I don't know the exact number just like I don't know a lot of things) but when we start a tank (and I don't know why most of the threads are about new tanks so we don't know what happened to the old tanks) The different types of bacteria we use (by accident) are the main things that will determine if that tank will be successful or not.

If our tanks crash, part of that is our fault and part of it is because of the bacteria/viruses/parasites we add or don't add at the beginning. The vast majority of people, and you know who you are, are convinced that we definitely need to kill parasites and viruses. Killing is not always the best route. I am a soldier so I have some experience with this.

When we look at a tank we see fish, corals, little Chinese villages, treasure chests with bubbles opening and closing the lid etc. But that is a very small part of the flora and fauna in the tank. If we could see really well, and we can't, we would see the constant battle that is going on between the bacteria, viruses and parasites. They are all always fighting and sometimes you can see the smoke from those battles.

The outcome of those ongoing conflicts is what determines if your tank will be healthy or a continuing concoction of medications, frustrations and holy water.

Then if we (God Forbid) add something that will "annoy" or "Kill" either parasites, bacteria or viruses we cheat and no one likes a cheater. Most of the medications we use to kill parasites will also kill bacteria. Good and bad bacteria. When that happens the viruses get together, have a party and do the macarana, which is why in many of the posts we see someone treating with some medication to try to control some perceived threat and the fish come down with cottony growths, fin rot, dropsy, swim bladder disease or the heartbreak of psoriasis.

When fish were in the sea happily living with every disease known to man along with Supermodels and Jimmy Hoffa they were fine. I have spent countless hours under water for over 50 years and have never seen a sick fish unless it was just bitten in half or someone medicated it. (Well almost never)

Then we put that creature in a tank with very few natural microscopic organisms and feed it with pellets from Walmart which doesn't have the same gut bacteria the fish was living with in the sea and the fishes immunity goes from 100% to 3% so we run out and buy Prizapro to try to cure it which rarely helps because it causes something else.

If we concentrated more on allowing the fishes natural immunity to keep the thing healthy and less on trying to destroy what we feel is bad, many more of us would be successful and less stressed.

One more thing for the 3 people who read this rant. It drives me crazy, as a lot of things do, when people do something and they say they had "Great Success". To me, Great Success is if you do something for a creature and it goes on to live out it's life and hopefully dies of old age.

A tang, lionfish, tuna etc can not be called Great Success if we only kept it for 2 years. At 2 years it may be a success but not Great Success. Marilyn Monroe had Great Success as an actress and would have had more success until someone killed her. But thats for another thread.

References:
The Lady who cleans my house.
My Book. OK, thats silly.

Thank you for your service Sir.

 

[Paul B]

I hated poetry when I was taught it in schools,

Kris, If I had to take poetry in school I would have also hated it. Our Daughter is the writer and poet in our family and she took writing or something like that, who remembers?

She also wrote the foreword in my book which I think you either read or use to level your Christmas tree like so many people do.

In school I insisted that I only took "Manly" subjects. Things like the correct way to weild a cro bar, hang a block and tackle or untangle barbed wire wrapped around a bull Moose. ll

I went to trade school and didn't have to waste time on inane things like math, art or singing.

Poetry was never my strong suit but I can spin a yarn or talk the fuzz off a peach or the parasites off a lipstick tang.

I have publicly spoken quite a few times and think I may speak at LIRA soon. The Long Island Reefers association. The last time I spoke was for our town library and it was in a chocolate factory here. I spoke about a battle I was in in Nam because the guy who wrote the book on that battle wasn't in it.

But he was a patriot because as a fighter pilot in Nam, he was shot through his chest and for that, I have great respect for him.

Thats him to the left of me. I must be talking about a fish I caught that morning.
The guy in the back is my body guard. His name is knuckles. I hired him because I thought he must be tough with a name like Knuckles. Then I found out it is really Knickers or Snickers which sounds kind of Wossy.

 

[jabberwock]

Kris, If I had to take poetry in school I would have also hated it. Our Daughter is the writer and poet in our family and she took writing or something like that, who remembers?

She also wrote the foreword in my book which I think you either read or use to level your Christmas tree like so many people do.

In school I insisted that I only took "Manly" subjects. Things like the correct way to weild a cro bar, hang a block and tackle or untangle barbed wire wrapped around a bull Moose. ll

I went to trade school and didn't have to waste time on inane things like math, art or singing.

Poetry was never my strong suit but I can spin a yarn or talk the fuzz off a peach or the parasites off a lipstick tang.

I have publicly spoken quite a few times and think I may speak at LIRA soon. The Long Island Reefers association. The last time I spoke was for our town library and it was in a chocolate factory here. I spoke about a battle I was in in Nam because the guy who wrote the book on that battle wasn't in it.

But he was a patriot because as a fighter pilot in Nam, he was shot through his chest and for that, I have great respect for him.

Thats him to the left of me. I must be talking about a fish I caught that morning.

I was the co-winner of the reef2reef poetry contest!
post # 34
poetry

 

[KrisReef]

I was the co-winner of the reef2reef poetry contest!
post # 34
poetry

I won the contest but then thing got complicated and I was tossed out on a technicality , something like my poetry wasn't as good as post #34? Never made sense to me how I could lose that competition. It was all kind of confusing how it turned out but that was a certainly a fun contest! Congratulations.

We went out to celebrate our grandsons safe delivery today. September 3, Ezra Reef, or something like that. What a great day it has been.

 

[Gatorpa]

What if someone is presenting you new information they've discovered, and you disagree since it's not from a book that someone else discovered


Does that make the information wrong if it shocks you, or you feel the new discovery is wrong?

How will you know if new information given to you is wrong or right if you're only accepting published info as the truth?

Here's some anecdotal discoveries once stated as untrue in the forums since these works didn't come from a published article


Peroxide dosing is #1

Touted as a tank wrecker by staunch chemists, a widespread chemical killer of all that's good in reefing

And after ten years now of dosing it, it's a permanent tool in the hobby box upgraded now for fish disease prevention, in addition to myriad tank dosing uses for invasion control.

And if gatekeepers who only accept published media as truth had their way, it wouldn't exist as a tool to help so many.

There's 20 more examples of anecdote being better, faster, more adaptive than slow slow peer reviews and formal published material

And yes there's wrong info too in the mix. Any anecdote that comes with a thread of 300 reefs doing a new claimed action X is probably on the verge of becoming new truth, just like peroxide did

Anecdote begins to move into truth when scores of reefs can be aligned and documented and inspected all around a central theme.

Just like pico reefs did (the large tankers used to post links to coral allelopathy as the reason a pico reef must be fake or plumbed to be working)

There's ways to misuse formal peer review information in order to suppress discoveries. Formalists are always trying to hold down the anecdote brother, but bulk pattern will always be a faster, stronger driver of change in the hobby. Formal peer reviews are slow and ten years dated behind the point of discovery

Funny you bring up H2O2, I’ve seen a ton of positive posts and negative posts about this.

I wonder if it will be like the old way where NO3 and PO4 were coral killers and now many dose that “poison“

 

[brandon429]

A case in point:

This thread everyone likes is using findings that are 100% not from peer reviewed university published materials

Extreme Water Clarity and Cyano Eradication, Made Easy!

Edit 10/092023: Note that I have tweaked the formula a bit. You can find an updated video here: Coral Snow Link: Coral Snow Hello all! I have been reefing now for about 25 years, and over those many years I have picked up many tips, tricks, and best habits/practices. From a hobbyist and...

www.reef2reef.com

See how our hobby cannot advance without this element



The best thing this hobby ever did was break away from formal peer reviewing and make its own way for procedure, the market accepts or denies offers based on patterned outcome.


Ironically I don't believe anything in that thread/ cause and effect claims

But that doesn't mean I'm right either, they're not on page twenty of fails or an angered market, they all like the claims so I'm watching patterns unfold with my pen and paper watching for new changes underway in invasion management

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

A case in point:

This thread everyone likes is using findings that are 100% not from peer reviewed university published materials

Extreme Water Clarity and Cyano Eradication, Made Easy!

Edit 10/092023: Note that I have tweaked the formula a bit. You can find an updated video here: Coral Snow Link: Coral Snow Hello all! I have been reefing now for about 25 years, and over those many years I have picked up many tips, tricks, and best habits/practices. From a hobbyist and...

www.reef2reef.com

See how our hobby cannot advance without this element



The best thing this hobby ever did was break away from formal peer reviewing and make its own way for procedure, the market accepts or denies offers based on patterned outcome.


Ironically I don't believe anything in that thread/ cause and effect claims

But that doesn't mean I'm right either, they're not on page twenty of fails or an angered market, they all like the claims so I'm watching patterns unfold with my pen and paper watching for new changes underway in invasion management

I agree! I would certainly never advocate for only the CURRENTLY ACCEPTED information to be displayed/shared. What's currently accepted now can easily be incorrect and change as new light is shed upon new findings and further investigation reveals more. I agree that anecdotal evidence and informal experimentation among hobbyists are certainly very important in this hobby.

 

[OrionN]

It is rare indeed that we have any published double blinded information in our hobby. The best we can hope for is reproducible experiences.
Even if something was published,!it does not mean that it is true.
Reefers just need to do diligent research and use their brain and try to determine nuggets from trash. You can do this by knowing your sources, research your sources well and a great majority of the information from a good source will not lead you down the wrong path.

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

A

It is rare indeed that we have any published double blinded information in our hobby. The best we can hope for is reproducible experiences.
Even if something was published,!it does not mean that it is true.
Reefers just need to do diligent research and use their brain and try to determine nuggets from trash. You can do this by knowing your sources, research your sources well and a great majority of the information from a good source will not lead you down the wrong path.

Agreed...it's important to know your source and quality of your source...btw, i knew this thread would be resurrected eventually!

 

[OrionN]

Many years ago, at the start of my Internal medicine class in medical school, my professor pointed to the huge textbook that he edited, as the Editor in Chief, and told my class:
“Approximately 50% of the information on this textbook will eventually prove to be false. The problem is we don’t know which 50% yet”. We still use books then not computer.
There is essentially no aquarium related studies, only experiences. The best informations we have are mostly reproducible experiences. Be discriminate and take it all with a huge grain of salt.