Controversy when doing Research

I read articles all the time in the Aquarium Fish International magazine and on other internet sites about our hobby of fish-keeping. There is so much controversy and misinformation out there on different subjects that it can make a person very leery to take anyone’s advice on anything.

One example of confusion for me came from an article I read on. In the article “Using Salt for Freshwater Aquarium Fish” by David A. Lass he states “Fishlore (Don’t think he was referring to the website but more to fish stories) also has it that salt is good for use with mollies, other livebearers and goldfish. The vast majority of livebearers, including mollies of all types and colors, and sailfins, come from the Far East. They have been raised in water that is moderately hard, and of neutral pH. These tropical fish are very far removed from the wild mollies that came from brackish water. All of the sailfin and lyretail mollies, balloon bellies, blacks, reds, dalmations do fine without salt. The same with goldfish. ” I am not sure what his qualifications are or where he gets his information from but he leads me to think I have been misinformed about where Mollies came from. I thought wild Mollies came from Central American and the southern areas of the US like south Texas but he might have been referring to farm raised Mollies only and yes quite a few come from the Far East but lots are farm raised in the US too. I also thought goldfish were cold freshwater fish and I have never heard of anyone suggesting to add salt to a goldfish tank.

In his article he also promotes using chemicals to treat ich rather than simply raising the temperature of the tank to help kill of the ich. In my personal opinion it is always better to keep chemicals out of my tanks if at all possible and if doing something so simple as raising the temperature of my tank keeps me from having to add a chemical to the tank I will raise the temperature.

I then read another article on the same website written by Philip A. Purser, “Livebearer Fish Deserve Respect”. In this article he states “Native to the mangrove swamps and estuaries of Central and South America, mollies have been introduced to the southern United States, as well as throughout much of Southeast Asia. The mollies comprise a large portion of the family Poeciliidae, a group known for its tolerance of brackish and saline environments. Mollies are very salt-tolerant, and millions are produced annually for the commercial pet trade in coastal breeding preserves that are fed entirely by the ocean.” He also goes on to state “A batch of feeder goldfish dropped into a reef aquarium will last for only a few minutes before going belly-up, if they are not eaten immediately. But a batch of salt-acclimated mollies will thrive in a marine aquarium for as long as it takes the predatory fish to consume them.”

So you see just in two articles there is a controversy between the two writers for the same magazine so know wonders we can all get confused on what is recommended and what is not. You can pick any topic you want to research and you will quickly find two articles that will be total opposites in what they recommend, so you really need to do a lot of research and not take just one person’s opinion on what to do. That is what I like about FishLore, you can get several opinions quickly and the pros and cons of a topic.

 

In fish keeping, as in everything else in life, there are differing opinions and ways of going about things. As soon as you get three people together, you will have at least two differing thoughts on any subject.

About the only thing we can do, is do our research, learn all that we can, and then go with the ideas that make the most sense to us.

Sometimes it almost seems as if there is too much information, and it can get confusing.

No one will be 100% right, and no one will be 100% wrong.

That's why the internet is so cool, all the information in the world at your finger tips. For those of you who grew up with it, it may just seem like it's always been that way. For us that grew up before the internet, it seems pretty amazing.

 

I've read the salt and goldfish thing before, and heard a couple people reference it. But yeah, it's extremely rare to come across.

He also goes on to state “A batch of feeder goldfish dropped into a reef aquarium will last for only a few minutes before going belly-up, if they are not eaten immediately. But a batch of salt-acclimated mollies will thrive in a marine aquarium for as long as it takes the predatory fish to consume them.”

No kidding....the unacclimated goldfish die in minutes while the acclimated mollies do not. That's a shocker

 

Fishkeeping is a hands on hobby. Lots of knowledge can be obtained from reading books and doing research, but true knowledge lies in experience. You won't know if a "fish keeping rule" holds true for your exact circumstances until you try

 

Fishkeeping is a hands on hobby. Lots of knowledge can be obtained from reading books and doing research, but true knowledge lies in experience. You won't know if a "fish keeping rule" holds true for your exact circumstances until you try

That's it exactly !!!

 

The reason I started this tread is to show that no mater what someone tells you there is always someone with a different point of view as we have all seen in the threads here on FishLore. I can’t remember much about what I was told as a beginner because back then I was only 10 and there weren’t too many pet stores around to ask questions to. When I started keeping fish I lost quite a few due to lack of knowledge and experience. Which brings me to something I always told my kids to remember: The difference between the dumb man, the smart man and the wise man is that the dumb man doesn’t learn from his mistakes but the smart man does and the wise man learns from watching the dumb man and the smart man and learns from their mistakes.

As beginners with so much information at their finger tips it has to be a bit confusing. As long as they learn and improve on their fish-keeping skills all is good but when they are given totally wrong advice to start off with they loose interest and stop keeping fish because they think it is rocket science, which it is not.

 

I like forums like Fishlore because you can ask others what's worked for them. Real experience. Most magazine or newpaper writers these days aren't very thorough in their research, too eager to write. I do the 2 out of 3 approach, if the major opinion leans one way, it wins. Say we read 5 articles on a topic, the majority opinion rules. It's like raising children, everyone has an opinion and there' a million books on how it's done.