Tips for Good Posts

[Daniel]

When giving advice in a post it can be helpful to explain the thinking behind the advice you are giving and your personal experience that leads you to feeling confident about the specific advice your are giving.

I'll give an example.

The original post reads something like this:

Help! I think my fish have fungus, what should I do??

The next forum member giving advice says:

'Treat with salt'

What is missing in the answer is quite a bit. Why salt? What does salt do to a fungus? Is there any situation that salt would not be appropriate? Have you personally had a fish with a fungal infection that you treated with salt, and if so, what were these results?

Maybe something like this would be even more helpful:

'One common treatment for fungus is to use aquarium salt. My Serpae tetra recently had a fungal infection and I treated with salt. I left the salt in the water until the fungus cleared up (which was about a week). After that I did a water change. If the fungus had come back, I would have dosed with salt again at a higher concentration for an additional week.

Salt works by dehydrating the fungus, which kills the fungus (but not the fish).

Do you have plants in your aquarium? If so you need to know that plants are sensitive to salt so you might need to move your fish to a quarantine tank if you intend to treat with salt.'

Not every post has to be this detailed, but the additional information can be very helpful and educational, which is one of the prime reasons we are all here.

[Lemon]

thanks Daniel this is something i worry about quite a bit lol

[Hobbit]

Permission from @Daniel to be wordy and over explain things. Yay! 😇

Just kidding—I totally agree. I always appreciate the extra details when someone comments.

[Will Billy]

Hmm. That is some very good food for thought there Daniel. I know for me personally, being that i am quite new to the forum, i often wonder how i come across to others. I love this hobby, but i love helping people more. With that being said i often worry about coming off to much like a know it all, or an eager beaver searching for validation from others. Thats never my intention, i just truly like to help anyway i can. Your advice does have me thinking of how i could post better advice, in an effort to add value to this wonderful forum. So far i feel ok about my posts, but there is always room for improvement. Thank you Daniel, i will keep your words of wisdom in mind moving forward. Hands down this is the best forum i have ever come across. 

[Daniel]

@Will Billy Luckily for me I don't have to worry about whether I seem like I am a know it all. The answer is...yes!!! But we all know nobody knows it all.

Just because somebody sounds like they know what they are talking about doesn't mean they do (especially me). I have given incorrect information more than once on this forum.

For example in a recent post about snails mating I jumped in and said:

Sounds like I know what I am talking about, right? Wrong!

@Sapere_Ceta nicely, and gently gave the correct answer:

The lesson I learned is to be careful repeating something you read somewhere as truth. Especially about something you haven't done personally. I have never had mystery snails or read up on them. I think I watched a PBS video on snails mating and was parroting that info.

But one of the beauties of this forum is for every @Daniel who gets his facts jumbled up a bit, there is a @Sapere_Ceta to gently get the discussion back on track. Does anyone remember the old SNL skit with Dan Akroyd and Jane Curtain as debate partners where Jane would give a thoughtful answer to a question and then Dan would then turns to her and say 'Jane you ignorant &$@(...'   That's not how we do it on this forum.

I guess this is a very long way of saying don't worry or be shy or self-conscious about posting, but if possible speak from personal experience. It is hard to go wrong from there!

[Socqua]

Tl;dr never trust Daniel when it comes to snails.

😉

[Casual aquatics]

Very informative information my friend