i agree with you 100%. i wish there was such a way to tell someone how to start a tank in 1 way, but unfortunately there is not. most
LFS's are in it for the money, so they give the advice that they think the buyer wants to hear ... leading to them coming in and spending more money. unfortunately, there is nothing that i can do about that part of the hobby ... short of opening my own store (not gonna happen anytime soon). i think that the issues that are brought up here would be best handled by local area clubs, in education, and advertising in
LFS's. to do this you need to have a good relationship with the stores. around here there are a couple in good standing with my club ... the others have the this is a business outlook (which i can somewhat understand) but they also think that clubs suck because we trade amongst ourselves and dont buy all of the stuff they have (but if you think about that we trade
frags of their corals with each other, but we also ALL have to buy from the same stores unless we buy online).
i would absolutely LOVE to help out every newbie that comes into this hobby with their tank, but unfortunately they find this site after the mistakes are made, due to bad
LFS advice (again and as you stated above). i think that you "project newbie" would be an awesome idea to get off of the ground. maybe some kind of general article put together from the thousands of post that we have all done here and elsewhere. i would have to get a lot of permissions to use posts and articles, but it might be doable. this could end up more like a book than an article, but we can surely see where it takes us. in closing though, it is going to have to start with the
LFS's telling people to research before they buy or there will always be a problem on this subject.
BTW ... thanks for the feedback !! there are certainly no hard feelings here.
