I am sorry that you have not been happy with my/our efforts to help. I can assure you wholeheartedly that I was not “backtracking your posts to try to catch you out” – instead, I was doing my best to help you all along with the information that you had provided, as have others also done their best in response to your previous and other posts. This necessitated going back through your posts to try to re-establish the various points, as there was so much conflicting information that it was difficult to figure out how to help. When someone asks questions on the forum, others build up a sense of their set-up and are always thinking of what sort of advice might be helpful. On a number of occasions in your case, additional information has suddenly been provided which has made best efforts to help and provide suitable advice extra difficult – more fish in the equation that we hadn’t been aware of, etc. I apologise if my exasperation at this came across – the point that I was attempting to make, and which I’d encourage any fishkeeper using this forum to make, is to:
* give us the full information from the outset (eg cycling method, stock or proposed stock, tank size), etc.;
* keep us updated as they go along such as any intentions for stocking, discuss alternatives/options, etc, rather than ask for advice, then advise us after the event that actually more have been acquired and a tank of a certain size purchased, which then makes efforts to help you even more difficult – eg we could have advised not to buy the penguins and cardinals if you had already got the 123L with fish, or vice versa, or advised on a suitable sized tank or number of tanks of what sizes in the circumstances.
The internet is full of information via video and print from self-described “experts” which anyone could call themselves, staff in shops are trained to sound very knowledgeable, and there is huge variation in quality of this advice from downright appalling (yet which sounds plausible) to excellent. It can indeed be very difficult for a newcomer to know what the quality of that information is, and who to trust, to decipher the poor from the good quality information. However, sources such as
www.fishbase.org and
www.seriouslyfish.com are very reputable internationally with regards to species’ requirements – the latter is a more comprehensive and up-to-date source than the good, helpful and user-friendly Fish Profiles on here. This is where many of our responses re each species’ requirements are derived from, as we at Thinkfish prefer to provide advice from good quality sources renowned internationally on the basis of collective fishkeepers’ experiences (in addition to referring to our own experiences where applicable – and will specify where this is the case) than try to sound like an expert based purely on our own experience. I hope this explanation is helpful.
[Dictated via voice-activated typing – hope it is coherent.]