The best advice you’ll ever get

I was reading the popular Reef Builders blog the other day when I noticed this sentence in an excellent post by Scott Fellman titled Thoughts on Reef Aquarium Husbandry: “Good things done in small measures, with frequency.” :

The key to ultimate long term success in the hobby is not just having the ultimate system and the hottest equipment – it’s the effort that you put in as a hobbyist to provide your animals with the best possible care.

I can’t think better advice to give to a new (or experienced for that matter) reef aquarists. It is really important to understand the message: the success depends only on you and your actions. A good aquarist with mediocre equipment will always beat a mediocre aquarist with good equipment.

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I have a couple of my own, more grumpy advice:

Don’t just sit there, do something!

The saying “Only bad things happen quickly in a reef aquarium” has some merit but many have taken this far too literally. If you can see there is something wrong in the aquarium it calls for a immediate action. Don’t just sit there wishing the problem will go away by itself. There is absolutely no reason to prolong the stress the inhabitants are experiencing.

Only ask if you can’t find the answer.

I don’t agree with the phrase “There are no dumb questions, only dumb answers.” The question that has been asked hundreds of times is a dumb question indeed if it is repeated. You will learn a lot more by doing the research yourself.

And finally, one of my favorite quotes:

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

- Albert Einstein

Tags: food for thought, grumpy, Husbandry

This entry was posted on Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 17:57 and is filed under Ideas and misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.