Newbie Authors Wanted

[titus]

Hello,

I'm planning to create a new section in this part of cyberspace by dedicating an area for complete newbies. Hopefully it'd also be an opportunity for us to add a new image and design to the site as well. The goal is to have a place where the navigation, graphics, and reading is a lot easier for newcomers than to ask them to sift through all threads in the forums that we have now. Afterall, newbies don't know where to start.

Now, the exact content and layout is still up in the air but I have come up with the following, which hopefully should address most of the commonly asked and missed areas for getting started in this hobby:

Newbie Steps
1) How to get started?
2) Equipment list
3) Costs
4) Resources (boards, books, lfs, aquariums)
5) Is it really all that expensive and complicated?

Next thing you need to know...
1) water parameters
2) what light, color temperature, par
3) basic coral and fish info

Time to get started
1) Choose your tank size and type
2) Plumbing
3) Sand it!
4) Fill it up
5) Cycle
6) Stock it up
7) Maintenance

The above list looks short and easy but there could be a lot of information (even not getting into details) covered. So I'd like to know if anyone is interested in writing in one or more of the above numbered areas. For example, under "water parameters" we can have a series of articles written by multiple members on the different water parameters. And same thing goes for "how to get started" since we all have different stories for how we began.

If there are questions on how to approach this, please reply to this Sticky. If you want to go ahead and give one of the above area a shot, then post a thread with a self-explanatory title. For example, if you want to write on "Stock it up" for a new tank and suggest what may or may not be a good animal to add for newbie, just post a thread titled "Stock it up". Then anyone who wants to pitch in their articles in the same subject area just reply to the same thread. After we have a few we can vote to see which one(s) would make it a reference article on this site for newbies. Also, we may want to combine articles with credits to both authors, etc.

The overall point of doing this is to create a content and guide that doesn't delve into the nitty gritty stuff but offers a general understanding of the technicality in this hobby. For example, authors need not get into equations of how water chemistry affects pH, alk, etc but can offer a general guide of why for example pH is lower during night time and that they need to watch both alk and ca (maybe even mag) levels for proper balance. So you can see there aren't really any limits on the articles other than where creativity takes you.

Titus