Someone tells me they can't afford a refractometer or ro/di because they bought a pretty pricey fish.
Rethinking is in order here.
Prioritizing fish ahead of equipment to safely handle their arrival and support their lives worries me a lot!
There is plenty of entertainment to be had from good conditions and a piece of really nice rock that brings forth worms and crawly things. You can watch this activity for hours.
I worry when someone's first instinct is to try to kill the worms and crawling things, because, well, ooky.
This is the ocean. Many things have spines and crawl, or grow in lumpy shapes. And no, that rock will not stay pristine white. White is death. Brown and such are life.
Fish are one part of the hobby: their world has spiny, crawly things and weird growths just as ours has grass and trees. Trust that most rocks plucked from the ocean and brought to your tank are not carriers of things pathological or problematic, just part of the grass and trees thing.
You see people post pix of things like eunicids and crabs they don't want because of their fish-eating habits, but those can go in the sump (yes, those are another Real Good Idea unless you are incredibly space-challenged)---and live a long and useful life eating detritus. And remember---people come here mostly posting problems. For every person that found a hairy crab in the rock, there are several thousand people who didn't. Really bad things are SO rare that I've never even seen a bad hitchhiker in my own stuff, and I've been reefing with live rock since the 1980's and never curing the rock at all, unless you count the spare pieces I keep in the sump.
If it's ooky, use exam gloves. It's nicer to the ooky things, too---our hands have roughness and hand cream, neither of which is nice to the critters.
Your fish will be happier and more active, ime, in a textured environment with lots to poke into and look at and nooks to hide in.
Just sayin'.
Rethinking is in order here.
Prioritizing fish ahead of equipment to safely handle their arrival and support their lives worries me a lot!
There is plenty of entertainment to be had from good conditions and a piece of really nice rock that brings forth worms and crawly things. You can watch this activity for hours.
I worry when someone's first instinct is to try to kill the worms and crawling things, because, well, ooky.
This is the ocean. Many things have spines and crawl, or grow in lumpy shapes. And no, that rock will not stay pristine white. White is death. Brown and such are life.
Fish are one part of the hobby: their world has spiny, crawly things and weird growths just as ours has grass and trees. Trust that most rocks plucked from the ocean and brought to your tank are not carriers of things pathological or problematic, just part of the grass and trees thing.
You see people post pix of things like eunicids and crabs they don't want because of their fish-eating habits, but those can go in the sump (yes, those are another Real Good Idea unless you are incredibly space-challenged)---and live a long and useful life eating detritus. And remember---people come here mostly posting problems. For every person that found a hairy crab in the rock, there are several thousand people who didn't. Really bad things are SO rare that I've never even seen a bad hitchhiker in my own stuff, and I've been reefing with live rock since the 1980's and never curing the rock at all, unless you count the spare pieces I keep in the sump.
If it's ooky, use exam gloves. It's nicer to the ooky things, too---our hands have roughness and hand cream, neither of which is nice to the critters.
Your fish will be happier and more active, ime, in a textured environment with lots to poke into and look at and nooks to hide in.
Just sayin'.
