Marine aquarium hobbyists have a great track record when it comes to helping themselves, and, through the marine aquarium online forums, they are great at helping other hobbyists and the hobby in general. In particular, marine aquarists are good at finding information about how to set-up and keep a thriving saltwater aquarium because, let’s face it, there really are no instruction manuals in this hobby. Sure, there are some fantastic books that can really help, but when it comes to the definitive answer of how to plumb a UV sterilizer (in-line with your return or on a closed loop off your sump?) or where to place returns and powerheads to create the perfect flow pattern, the hobbyist often has to find this information on his or her own.
The Internet as a Resource for Saltwater Hobbyists
The Internet has proven a phenomenal resource for today’s marine aquarist. While I don’t want to downplay the role of local marine aquarium societies, you can’t always have one in your living room when you are deciding which protein skimmer to get. You can however, have the Internet and access to nearly limitless information at your fingertips at any time of the day or night. While there are a number of good sites that are driven by content written by “professionals” (WetWebMedia comes to mind), there are also countless forums where the content is generated by hobbyists for hobbyists. That is what I want to talk about today.
Marine aquarium forums or bulletin boards, like the one at Saltwtarefish.com, are remarkable resources filled with information based on actual experience. While the people answering the questions on the boards may not be published authors, they are often people with practical, real-world experience and a self-motivated desire to share that experience specific to the questions you ask. As a writer, I have often found “experts” for various articles on which I was working by posting a thread in a specific category of a bulletin board and seeing who responds.
The Nuts and Bolts of Online Forums
Let’s back up for a minute and cover the basics of online forums for the uninitiated. A marine aquarium forum is an online discussion site or bulletin board (so-called because it is a vestige of the old dial-up bulletin board technology) where registered users are given access to a web application specifically built for the purpose of managing user content. That’s a mouthful! Participation in most forums (or “boards” as they are frequently called) requires registering where the user (you) will be asked to agree to the terms of service and verify your e-mail address. The purpose of this is to avoid abuse of the forum by spammers and others who are not truly interested in the topic of the forum.
Once registered, a user may (and commonly does) choose to maintain anonymity with fellow users by using a nickname or username and hiding his or her actual identity (often these usernames indicate something about the user on saltwater aquarium boards such as their favorite fish). While a user is not required to contribute user-generated content, most users will eventually posts in a thread. Posting is simply the process of posting a message in a self-contained box that includes the user’s username, date or post and other genera information about the user (perhaps even a picture or avatar). Generally the user has control over how much or how little personal information accompanies a post.
Posting in Threads and Forums
The user’s post is posted to a thread, which is a group of posts surrounding a topic that was started by one user usually as a question, comment or observation. Some threads only have two or three posts posted within a 24-hour period, while other threads may have thousands of posts over a period of years. The posts in a thread are generally moderated by a moderator or “mod” who insures that the terms of service are adhered to and that the forum remains friendly or “flame free.” The moderator or the site administrator may, in extreme cases, choose to delete a post or even an entire thread. The moderator or administrator may also choose to make a thread “sticky” so that it always appears at the top of the category of threads (this is done when a thread is perceived to be particularly useful to users).
While posts are posted to threads, threads are posted to category headings known as forums, and it is usually from these forums that the user begins their search on a board. For example, if you go to the Saltwaterfish.com board, you will find that the first forum is titled “Welcome to the Hobby”, and under that forum heading, there are three subtopics:
If you click on “New Hobbyists”, you will see a series of “sticky” threads at the top. Take a look at the thread titled “101 Tips to Beginning and Maintaining a Saltwater Aquarium.” This is a sticky thread with, at the time of this writing, 130 replies (these are all individual posts) and 21,162 views (the number of times the thread has been viewed). If you click on the thread, you will see that it was started by someone with the username Lion_crazz (we can assume based on the username and avatar that this aquarists likes lionfishes) on 6 January 2008 at 6:58 pm. We can also see that Lion_crazz has posted over 13,000 posts since June 2004. Talk about experience, eh?
While the new hobbyists will read through this thread (and the others in this forum) with interest, the more experienced hobbyist may choose to head to a more specialized forum such as the SPS Corals subforum in the Corals Forum or the Captive Breeding subfolder in the Aquaculture and Breeding Forum. In reality, there is a forum for just about every topic one could imagine, and if there isn’t one, than the user need only start it.
User Beware
Now, while I am a big fan of the boards when it comes to finding, sharing and debating information, there are a few potential downsides of which the new user should be aware. For example, just because someone has posted 100,000 posts does not necessarily make them an expert. Any information you come across on a forum should be viewed as an opinion. Just like in “real life” there are those users who you will come to trust more than others, but just because you read something in a forum doesn’t mean you should take it as Gospel. It is a good idea to follow a thread carefully from beginning to end and then post observations and questions before making any decision informed by what you read.
There are tons of tools that make using the boards easier and more fun, but I’m going to leave it here for now while you go spend some time exploring on your own.
Happy reading and happy reefing!
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