What is just overcomplicating the hobby in your opinion?

[Frogspon]

Title say it all.. with companies in a race to offer the next greatest game changer.. what are some of the biggest duds?

 

[Spare time]

As for overcomplicating, everything red sea does except for how they recommend dosing trace elements. They recommend ULNS with unrealistic expectations for nitrate numbers, carbon dosing, and using 7 bottles for dosing as part of their whole setup. This hobby is not beginner friendly unless you have proper guidance and a lot of companies with their massive lineup of products that everyone "needs" right away makes things ridiculously complicated. I like red seas test kits, dosing trace elements according to calcium, and reef energy (and their lights to a degree), but boy oh boy do they make things more complicated than they need to be for new hobbyists.

I also think that apps for everything is annoying. Just give me on board controls.


Oh and light companies, stop giving us par readings with every color at 100%. You know no one uses the lights like that. And stop making mounting arms that lead to lazer beam hot spots in the middle of the tank. Know your product and make the mount have the light right where it should be. Also, create presets for people instead of having them rely on others to tell them how to best use your product.


Sorry about this rant haha, I just get fed up with having to fix issues with products because the companies are too lazy to do it themselves.

 

[bobnicaragua]

Dry rock and the idea of a pest free, sterile aquarium causes a lack of microfauna/biodiversity.

It is much easier to start a tank with live rock and florescent bulb lighting.

 

[Snuffy The Seal]

Dry rock and the idea of a pest free, sterile aquarium causes a lack of microfauna/biodiversity.

It is much easier to start a tank with live rock and florescent bulb lighting.

Never understood why people would want to get dry sterile rock, half the fun is getting random stuff on live rock.

 

[Gtinnel]

Dry rock and the idea of a pest free, sterile aquarium causes a lack of microfauna/biodiversity.

It is much easier to start a tank with live rock and florescent bulb lighting.

Starting with dry rock definitely makes this hobby much more frustrating at the beginning. I started my first reef tank about 20 years ago and almost everyone started with live rock and it made it so much easier. I came back to the hobby after being out for many years and I started my current tank with base rock and had problem after problem for the first year or so. I will never start a tank with dry rock again.

 

[Bouncingsoul39]

+1 to dead dry rock. Makes everything harder and take longer. I’ll add a lot of new hobby equipment. It’s new. It’s complicated. Though it’s actually not any better than the old stuff. Like skimmers. ASM skimmers we’re ugly and simple as heck. They work awesomely. LEDs. Annoying Apps and buggy firmware. Simple easy on or off T5 and halide bulbs work just as well if not better.
The only advantage these new hobby products have is energy efficiency. Most use lower wattage than the old stuff. But for me, that was never an issue anyway.

 

[Scorpius]

I'll probably get banned for this, but reading too much opinion on this forum will make you do funny things to your reef. Don't let others sway you if you're having success. There's a thousand ways to skin a cat with reefing.

 

[kados]

I'm mainly into FOWLR systems but I've had mixed reef tanks years ago and still have a softies setup currently (for now)..All of the funny named corals I read about on here make me cringe.. I know it's a me issue lol. The corals are beautiful but overwhelming. As previously mentioned in one of the prior posts, maintaining a reef is intimidating with so many products. Obviously not necessary for my setups but that's part of the reason not to dive into SPS and some LPS. You end up buying stuff you don't need in some cases because you feel like you're not doing enough or constantly tinker with the next best thing.