What are 3 things you wish someone had told you when you started....

[TMC]

Damsels are the devil

Lol I do believe they might be I have 2 juvenile yellow tails and just saw two days ago that I have a baby peppermint shrimp and one of the Damsels picks on the poor Lil thing incessantly

 

[rtparty]

Buy once, cry once

Stop listening to everyone and start listening to someone (find your mentors who you can trust and follow)

We keep water in this hobby. Water quality is the most important part. Water, flow, light. Let your decisions reflect that order and you'll be fine

 

[muzikalmatt]

1. Don't overreact. Sometimes some of your corals aren't going to look happy. It doesn't necessarily mean that something is terribly wrong with your tank and overreaction trying to solve a non-issue can do more harm than good.
2. Trust but verify. (i.e. Do your research.) There are a lot of opinions in this hobby and even your LFS can be wildly incorrect about things. So it's a good idea to get answers from multiple sources you trust to verify you are doing the right thing. This also applies to water testing. If you test something and the number seems really off, double-check it with a different test kit or see if your reagents/batteries/etc need replacing.
3. Don't get cocky. Just because you've experienced some level of success in one realm of reefing doesn't mean you'll have the same level of success in something else. The more you know in this hobby, the more you realize how much you don't know.

 

[LA Reef Addict]

1. don't do it.
2. don't do it.
3. don't do it.

seriously if i could go back 20 yrs and knowing what I now know, i would have saved tons of money by not getting in. super addicted now and loving/hating it. lol

 

[Nonya]

1. Nothing good happens fast; everything bad happens fast.
2. Invest in the best equipment you can get at the very beginning. It will cost less in the end, because the cheap options aren't good enough for the long run, and you will probably end up buying the high-end stuff anyway.
3. Just because the fish is really cool in the store, you're likely to get at home and find out the big mistake you made on an impulse buy when it attacks other fish, eats your corals, eats your snails, and eats your clams.