Using the Fish Forum
The Fish Lore forum is growing well and we have tons of fantastic members that go to great lengths to help others with their fish and aquarium problems. It’s really cool to see folks helping each other they way they do. I wanted to write this post not to brag about the members here (I’m very proud of our members) but to help those new to fish forums or even forums in general. This post has advice on structuring your questions in order to help the forum members understand your situation better so that they can provide a good response to your inquiry.
A couple of things that you should do would be to get an aquarium test kit that tests for pH, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and a thermometer to test the aquarium water temperature as well. By providing these numbers to your question you can quickly jump to the heart of the matter because you can almost bet that someone will be asking you for these numbers. These numbers are important for the majority of new tank problems and you may need to invest in additional test kits if you’re experiencing other water quality problems.
When writing your question on the forum it may be difficult at first, but try to think about all the questions that may come your way from the other members while trying to help you. Be proactive and provide the answers to these possible questions in your original post. It makes it much easier for someone trying to help you.
Another thing to keep in mind is that some consider it rude to re-ask a question that has been answered a hundred times before. Be proactive here too and use the search features to try and locate an answer to your question. If you don’t find one, then you can post your question. State that you tried searching for similar problems but couldn’t locate an answer. I think most will agree that it’s a joy to help others that are willing to help themselves. It can be a burden to help those that are too lazy to look for answers and want you to provide them with ALL the answers.
Basically, to get a good response to your questions, follow these friendly guidelines and you should be well on your way to being another great forum member:
- Search for an answer to your question using the search feature
- Provide as much information as possible in your post - the more the better. Post as many details as possible here. You may think a tiny little detail should have no bearing on the situation, but it just might.
- Post the water parameters (from test kits), tank size, how long the aquarium has been set up, etc.
- Be respectful and nice to those that are helping you. Doing so will make others want to help you as well and you should have many possible solutions to your problem in no time.
- Use the spell checker and use proper grammar and spacing in your posts. One huge paragraph with no line breaks can be very difficult to read. So can posts that look like they’ve been sent from a texting device. If it’s too hard to decipher many members may just skip over your post.
- Pay it forward! Once you get help for your problems and start to learn more about keeping fish, pay it forward. This means that you help others new to the hobby just like you were once helped.
- Have fun - the fish keeping hobby can be very addictive and extremely fun and rewarding. Enjoy it and enjoy life.
See you on the fish forum!
Thanks for reading,
Mike