Yeah, unfortunately bad advice abounds. Face it, most of us get at least our initial advice for this hobby at the
LFS. As we all know there are good
LFS and there are not so good
LFS and your success may depend on which one you walked into. I also think that some of the same thing holds true for forums. I would never take advice from someone you don't know as the sole source of advice. You know that there are guys out there who will tell you that you never need to do a water change. Or that you can put an anemone in a tank that had barely cycled.
The bad thing about
LFS is that people think that they should know what they are talking about. I believe that many of them do know their stuff. But there are ones that don't. There there are the big box pet stores. If you are lucky you will get someone who actually knows a little. Of course that kid might be off and you will get the one who doesn't know Purina 1 from Formula 1!
