Be a Socially Involved Hobbyist!

Editor's Note: this post introduces our newest contributing & well traveled author, Vince Tang.

One of the most important element to positively approach this hobby is to get in contact with people. If you haven't realize this yet, everything we do is basically communicating with fellow hobbyist. Make friends with fish store owners, other local hobbyist, importers/ exporters, fellow forum members, fish book author, and the list goes on and on. It doesn't hurt to have one more friend on this world, right?

Fish keeping is a great hobby in terms of making friends. First, you start of with making friends with fish store owners. You can get great advice(and maybe even discounts ;) ) from most fish store owners if(and only if) you are friendly with him. Based on my experience, if you don't chat with him/her, he won't care about if you are taking proper care of fish and have the proper setup etc etc.

Then once you have a tank ( a proper tank as advice by the fish store owners that you just made friends with), of course you'll have fish. And unfortunately, you notice one of them got sick at midnight, what can you do? That's when online communication comes in, forums. You can look through old threads for emergency help, or you can post up a new thread and almost immediately you'll get a reply back.

Editor's Note: never blindly believe an LFS owner/employee, or anyone else for that matter, without performing your own research!

Once you are online, on forums, you'll realize there are also fellow hobbyists that are local to you that you didn't know they existed before. Talk with them, chat with them, communicate, get to know them, share your knowledge and experience. Since you would all have the same interest, it is quite likely that you guys/ gals will become friends.

Once you establish a network of fish-related friends, you realize you can almost get anything you want (fish-wise) . Friends can look out for you for the fish you want. They can help ( or at least *try to* help) you if you need any help or if you need any specific info on a fish. Friends usually become teachers( in a way), since you would exchange experience and knowledge, it is very likely that you'll learn something new. Get to know people, maybe they have connections to a fish collector somewhere remote in the world for you, so you don't have to fly there yourself and get the fish yourself.

It doesn't hurt to have more friends. What comes out of a friendship in the end, it is most likely to be beneficial to both you and your friends.

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