I actually put this on another thread but I think I should have put it here. Or maybe no where
There is one more thing I would like to add, well maybe two.
Everything you learn here or anywhere else about this hobby is not necessarilly true. It may be true today, but tomorrow it may change. People have been keeping fish for 4,000 years, even the Romans kept fish. They kept them to eat but they still had to keep them alive. They had refrigerators but electricity was not invented,(or actually discovered) for 3,900 more years.
But salt water aquarium keeping is in it's infancy. It is only 40 years old. Thats half of Waterkeeper's life.
SCUBA diving is only just over 60 years old.
We have gone through UG filters, wet drys, roataing spray bars, Berlin systems, Jaubert systems, natural systems, semi natural systems, un natural systems, solar systems,
rotating wet dry drums, canisters, diatoms, (cough, cough) DSBs, SSBs starboard and bare bottoms, incandescent, flourescent, power compact, metal halide and now we are getting into LEDs.
We have dosed, iodine, calcium, magnesium and iron.
All of these things had and have a place in the hobby and they all have problems. It just depends on what problems you can avoid by using these systems for the purpose we intend to use them for.
Wet dry systems for example are fantastic to eliminate ammonia so in a fish only where there is large carnivores, it is (IMO) the best system. There is the problem of nitrates and we can incorporate another system for that. Of course that system may be a maintenance nightmare so something has to be added to counteract that problem.
There is not one system that will do everything and maintain itself.
There are also vast amounts of conjecture, un truths, ignorance and just plain guessing.
Don't ask a question about hair algae and expect a simple "cure" like add a sea hare. There is no cure because it is not a disease.
We are trying to "cure" a natural healthy (albeit) annoyance.
It grows on every healthy coral reef in the world and it will also grow in our tanks for reasons that are not entirely clear.
No, it is not because there is nitrate, phosphate, DOC or the Tooth Fairy in our tanks. These things (except for that Fairy) will make it grow greener and faster but if you have a tank with fish in it that you feed, there will be plenty of nutrients to grow algae. It grows inside the corals also and without it our corals would croak.
It can be "controlled" other ways.
You will read an awful lot about ich. The lifecycle has been studied to death. Something in the study of it's lifecycle is totally wrong. I don't care what professor you learned about ich from, there is something missing. (you can tell them I said so, just spell my name correctly, it's W A T E R K E E P E R
It certainly does not attack every fish it comes in to contact with and no one knows why. There are guesses about immune systems and the paracites interbreeding too many times, or the fishes health in relation to stress etc.
There are diseases like HLLE which attacks the majority of tangs and angels if you keep them long enough. That is caused by
stray electricity, stress, vitamin A deficiency, a bacteria, a virus, or all of those things. No one knows.
So, while you are trying to learn all you can, inject some common sence and realize that this stuff is not cut and dry. There are very few hard answers. That does not mean to stop reading, quite the contrary, read all you can, because that is the one and only way to sort out the truths from the almost truths, or todays truths.
I really hate to say this, but listen to Waterkeeper. He has been doing this almost as long as me. Don't listen too much to me because I am much more radical that he is which is why I almost never give advice to Noobs.
Have a great day. Or for those that are Christian, a great Palm Sunday
:lol: 
