I think this touches on two important points, which are a factor in both the hobby, and the forum / RC:
(1) "Sucess" in this hobby is something which is detemrined in years, not in weeks or months
(2) Just because we can do something (or at least think we can), it does not necesarily mean that we should.
Similarly, this thread touches on the two fish groups that this most frequently applies to: triggers and angels.
I am all too oftten reading lately that certain people have had "great sucess" with an angel in a reef tank, or keeping multiple angels, or keeping angels with lionfish and ambush predators etc. But how do we measure sucess, and what do we consider to be a minimum level of decency when it comes to caring for our fish? Is it sucess if you manage to keep two "large" angels in a 120 or 180 for 12 months..... 18 months ??? Or should sucess be defined as keeping those same two angels together, without serious incident, for the majority of their natural life span? Is it enough for our fish to merely subsist, before dying a premature death, or should we strive for our fish to thrive and live out a long life in our care? For my part, I think the latter should be our objective...... and simply wishing it, does not make it so. We all need to temper our dreams with a touch of reality, and wake up to the fact that, like the OP, none of us are special..... none of us are "exempt" from the rules...... gravity applies to everyone equally I'm afraid, and as much as we would like to believe that we each posess some uniquite skill and ability that lets us levitate above the mere mortal hobbiests, the simple fact is that we do not. The bottom line is that we, most of us, do not challenge convention, we simply disregard it and through it out the window, and write our own rules to justify what we know deep down to be wrong. Fundametally, there are two type of people out there..... those that care what is right and wrong, and those that do not. The majority of us fall somewhere in between in that we care, but not enough to do the right thing all the time..... so we simply strive to do our best...... my concern is that we purposely set the bar so lo for ourselves, that our best is nothing more than a facilitator to give ourselves the moral license to continue. I personally would never judge someone for their opinion, and just because I may disagree with someones opinion, it does not mean that I think they are a bad person or anything melodramitc like that, but I would urge the vast majority of the people here to think for 5 minutes, and see can they really convince themselves that they are doing the "right thing" in this hobby.
We are none of us stupid, we do not need one another to point out everything, all the time...... but stupidity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. Yet, we all make the same mistakes...... temptation knocks, and we answer, time and time again...... and each time we hear the same stories..... my clown trigger went nutts, my angel ate my corals, my passer murdered everything, my angel suddenly died for no reason........ we read hat we are supposed to do, we are told by experts what we should not do, but because we see someone else's short term sucess we use it as an enabler, and within a few years the predicitons of conventional wisdom nearly always come to pass. So, the next time you are about to post "can I keep a queen angel and a emperor angel in my 180, along with my blue face", stand back and think about long term stories about that expierence of people who have been doing it for 6 years, rather than using your buddy in your local club as the poster child who has been doing it for 6 months, and then ask yourself the question - "do I really need to ask"?
Conventional wisdom is something which has come about through decades of expierence, and is championed by such people as Bob Fenner. We would do well to listen more, and do less.
