While cleaning out my office, again, I came across some old written notes, yeah they had to be old as they were hand-written, that were a listing of some of the advice I had received over the years that I apparently had jotted down for use in an article.
Since I wrote this down I have gotten a lot of additional advice, finding this list nevertheless got me thinking about what is some of the best advice I have been given in this hobby over the years. In this regard I have been fortunate, in that during the early years of the hobby I frequently got to sit and share information with fellow hobbyists, many of whom are considered the true pioneers of the hobby.
除了感谢,我还grateful that I was smart enough to write down the pearls of wisdom that they gave me during these often impromptu discussions of the hobby. I don’t recall any of them being unwilling to share their secrets when questions were asked. Back then we often did not have many answers and in fact we realize we did not even have all the questions, but we did try to learn from each other’s successes and failures.
While I have given talks and written articles, I still appreciate how much I need to learn and how humbling this hobby can be. Maybe if I had heeded more of the great advice I had been given I would not still be making mistakes more often than I should. Looking over the list of advice I had written down I realize that much of the advice I was given is common sense and much of it is as applicable to every day life as it is to reefkeeping. So maybe there is a lesson to be learned there as well.
在我收到的建议清单的顶部是抽出时间的建议。自从我很小的时候，我似乎总是很着急。当我很幸运地有一个德国的珊瑚礁停下来看看1990年代的坦克，他坐下来看着我一会儿，然后给了我这个建议。他说的是花时间享受爱好，您做的事情如此之快，以至于您不喜欢这种爱好可以和应该的放松。
He was right as for the most part up until the last few years I always was in a kind of competition, mostly with myself, to constantly do something with my tanks. Whether it was adding a new tank, doing cleaning and maintenance or adding a new fish or coral, I was seemingly always in a hurry to do more. Only recently have I learned that the joy of the hobby comes from being able to sit back and enjoy my tanks rather than constantly having to tinker and manipulate them.
除了花时间，我收到的类似建议是在做任何事情之前尽可能多地计划。随着旧的陈词滥调，那些未能计划的人，计划失败。双向完成坦克之后，我必须承认，适当的计划在取得长期成功方面有很长的路要走。因此，当您花时间做时，同时适当地计划了有关坦克的所有内容。
Under this first piece of advice, was a second point that he no doubt also told me, and that was to give the corals time, they weren’t going anywhere. I laughed when I read this, as just as I was constantly changing things in the tank, so too was I constantly adding or moving corals around and I was not giving them time to settle in and grow. Unfortunately, I must admit that I still do this from time to time.
现在有很多令人难以置信的珊瑚，我一直在收购它们，因此必须搬出或取代我已经拥有的已经健康的彩色珊瑚。由于多种原因，这不是一个充满活力和健康的水箱的好方法。这条建议的警告是，当您将它们放在水箱中时，给珊瑚空间。
This is difficult at times, as space in my tanks is limited, but when I add frags I do try to give them at least a 2” perimeter so they can grow without having to battle nearby corals. By following this advice, many corals in my tanks, have been able to grow without getting into major battles with their neighbors as they were growing and becoming established. This is not the case when I have placed corals, including frags, in close proximity to one another from the start.
我的朋友阿尔夫·尼尔森（Alf Nilsen）给了我其他建议之一，我实际上指出谁给了我一些建议。当他拜访我的坦克并看到他们有多么多种不同的珊瑚的包装时，他说他喜欢珊瑚的颜色和健康，但是坦克看起来会更好，自然，而珊瑚会更健康，而不是拥有这么多它们仅限于5或6种珊瑚，但每种菌落都存在。
He said that this would be much more representative of a reef and that my tank would look much better to the viewer. I wish I had heeded this advice, but I must admit that the call of so many colorful corals has always trumped it. Perhaps in the future I will set up a tank in this way, with only a few different species of corals, but with multiple colonies of these chosen corals.
The biggest problem here would be which ones to choose. If someone has such a tank already set up I would love to see it, as despite having seen hundreds of tanks I have yet to see such a tank. After being on numerous reefs, I do see how interesting and appealing this look could be, not to mention how inexpensive setting up a tank this way could be.
对于我们大多数人来说，有时这种爱好可能很昂贵。这就是为什么我得到的建议似乎有点直觉的原因：获取您可以负担得起的最佳设备，从长远来看，它将为您节省金钱。它是违反直觉的，因为昂贵的设备可以为您省钱，这似乎没有意义。但是，在看到所有廉价的设备坐在我的车库中之后，我必须承认，试图省钱并让便宜的东西破裂并不得不更换它并不是省钱的好方法。
Some of my expensive protein skimmers and other equipment have been on my tanks for over 10 years, versus some of the cheap equipment I bought to save money has not lasted anywhere near as long. While I must admit that it is often difficult to figure out what is good for the money and what is not, the reviews of products here on the internet make it hard for products that will fail, to hide. And as all of us who have done this for a while know, the most expensive part of this hobby long-term is having to replace things again and again. It doesn’t matter if it is fish or corals or equipment, having to replace any of these is money wasted.
One of the best ways to keep track of what you are doing and what you are replacing is to keep a log. Probably one of the most useful pieces of advice I have been given is to log everything about the tank so that you can keep track of things rather than trying to remember everything. Sadly, I do get lazy from time to time and stop keeping a log, and every time I do this it bites me in the butt.
So now I try to keep a log of everything as knowing when things were added, including, fish, corals and equipment, what the parameters of the tank are and when things were cleaned or maintained, make it much easier to keep track of when something changes. The log is also a great way to keep track of serial numbers, reef related passwords and other important information about a tank.
我为每个储罐保留一个，它允许我比较设备和参数，因为如果我使用两个不同的加热器或电动头或泵等，当它们失败时，我可以比较每个持续的时间。更重要的是，保持日志可以让我看到参数的微小变化，以便我可以在成为主要问题之前进行更改或确定问题。
保留日志也可以使比较我的坦克的参数与其他人的参数变得容易得多，当我在水箱中添加新的碎片或鱼时，有时可能很重要。保留日志是很便宜的，现在甚至在网上都有网站可以快速地执行此操作，并且可以使您可以将储罐的参数与他人进行比较。
As I mentioned above, keeping track of my tank’s parameters is one of the best reasons for keeping a log. This goes hand in hand with the need for regular testing to take place. I was told long ago that you can’t tell what is going on in your tank unless you do regular testing. For the past 10 years, every Saturday morning before I do a water change, I test the parameters of my tanks and keep track in their logs. I test alkalinity, calcium, magnesium, pH, salinity, temperature, potassium, nitrate, phosphate and ammonia.
Even though there are monitors for pH, temperature and alkalinity I still manually test these just to make sure that the monitors are not off significantly and if they are then they get recalibrated. I know some hobbyists do not test for all of these parameters as frequently, I do because I have learned from my past mistakes not to take things, even if I think they are stable like salinity, for granted. By testing something even as simple as this one time I found out that my hydrometer was way off and another time that a slow leak was gradually causing the salinity in the tank to drop. If this parameter had not been tested regularly these small problems cold have become disasters.
In terms of disasters, one of the most common is also one that is often preventable. This is unfortunate in that every new hobbyist is given this advice as soon as they get into the hobby, yet few fully heed it even though it is a single word: Quarantine. Despite and possibly because of how good we have gotten at culturing and keeping marine fish and corals alive, we now have pests that were not a significant problem in the past but now can wipe out entire tanks if they are introduced.
马养殖和水产养殖的珊瑚的本质意味着许多珊瑚彼此紧密近。当害虫侵入它们也可以进入邻近的珊瑚时，这种接近使其变得更加容易。结果，如果在一个珊瑚上存在害虫，它通常存在于邻近的珊瑚上，这就是为什么害虫现在比过去更普遍的原因之一。同样，由于我们现在在保持生存的地方要保持生命的状态要好得多。
Because of this we now notice when a pest invades our tanks. So in order to prevent a pest from becoming a plague quarantining all new introductions is essential. There are many articles on the proper way to quarantine new specimens, so the only advice that I will add is give the quarantine process time. Many pests lay eggs that are immune to just about any dipping treatment so you need to give the eggs time to hatch so that you can kill the offspring. And some of these eggs can take over three weeks to hatch, so be patient. No reason to rush the potential demise of your corals.
Be reading this article you are heeding one of the other pieces of advice I was given early on: Read as much as you can from as many different sources as you can find. No one has all the answers, but if you read enough eventually you will find something of use.
For the past couple of years I have not only been reading as much as I can on the net and in US magazines, but I have also taken to reading some of the European and Japanese magazines as well. If they have digital versions that is, as I am not a translator, but the internet does this easily.. Some of these magazines have given me insight into topics that are only starting to be discussed here so for me it is a great new source of information.
Reading to gain knowledge and understanding is indeed great advice as is similar advice to learn from people you trust. As I have said for years I love seeing other people’s tanks and learning from them. Sadly, I do not see or hear about tank tours or people visiting one another’s tanks as much as I used to. In past years, often when I spoke the club members who brought me in set things up so I and some of their other members could travel around and see a lot the member’s tanks.
Me and other speakers also would often bring frags with us to trade with the members. Now sadly neither of these fun parts of the hobby seem to occur as much. This is regretful as seeing other’s tanks is still one of the best ways to learn new things and to avoid mistakes.
Obviously there is a lot of good advice out there and a lot of very successful individuals dispensing it. I have been fortunate in that I have gotten a lot of good advice over the years, looking back I wish I had heeded more of it. However, I do think I have followed the best advice I was given: have fun in the hobby and try to teach others from your mistakes.
I must admit that I have made many mistakes over the years but I have tried to learn from them and tried to teach others so they don’t make the same ones. And I still find the hobby one of the most fun things I do, so in that regard at least I have listened to one piece of advice I was given.
