Interventionist or laissez-faire with your tank?

[Sk8r]

In general, TRY not to put your hands in your tank except as a last resort, and even then, use gloves. Your tank will not like your hand cream or whatever you last handled. Your fingers will not like bristleworms. And the corals won't like having their defensive nematocysts snagged and torn by our comparatively rough hands.

Don't take radical solutions like scrubbing rock. If you spot one small rock with a pest like caulerpa, glove up, reach in, delicately remove the rock and set it out in the sun for a month or so, then put it into your sump to soak and re-vivify. If you have a hair algae problem, pull the excess off by (gloved) hand and use GFO.

Don't pour miracle potions into your tank. Understand that the FDA does not vet the claims made by miracle-merchants, and it's a jungle of false claims. Ask on RC. And don't believe a wildly positive review---until you're sure it's a real review and not a puff: take everything with a strong grain of salt. If you think something's a good idea, ask on RC and wait for answers from people who have some years at this hobby: that's safest. Yes, there are new discoveries, but as a novice, stick to tried and true.

One of the worst tanks to try to 'fix' is the tank that's had this and that theory tried on it, one after the other, had the rockwork yanked and rearranged, several different miracle potions or additives dropped in one after the other--- And the owner doesn't remember half of what went into this tank because it was all done in response to some emergency and nothing was logged in a book.

The good news is fairly simple: don't rush a situation, follow 'best practice' rules of thumb, observe, ask here, and THEN act, take NO drastic action without asking on RC, and try to get a consensus of advice. Most of all, don't get in a hurry. Quarantine your first fish. Let a new tank have just inverts for 4 weeks. And don't add anything to your tank in the way of supplements that you don't also have a test for.