[TheOldSalt]

"...i think it would make much more sense to start with a nano, you end up putting 60$ worth of coral and fish in it, and if it crashes... so what?..."

There. Right there. THAT is the very reason I don't bother helping people like you. Why cast pearls before cheapskate swine who will promptly ignore any advice given and do whatever is seemingly cheapest and easiest, since it doesn't really matter to them anyway?

"...its not the size of the tank that causes a crash, its the mistakes that people make, and crashing a nano isnt near as big of a deal as crashing a big tank...."

Oh. I BEG to differ.
First of all, those mistakes are easily absorbed and rendered safer in a bigger tank, which means that making a nanoreef is only the first of those mistakes.
Next, I'm sure all the dead nanoreef critters will be happy to know that their demises aren't a big deal. Of course, when you consider that for every big tank set up correctly there are several dozen little glass coffins all adding to the compounded slaughter, it suddenly becomes quite clear why nanoreefing among noobs must be discouraged, NOT encouraged. The allure of nanoreefing is very strong, and it attracts a lot of people who don't care if the animals live or die so long as it isn't expensive, and since it isn't expensive, they don't take enough time to do things properly, thereby snowballing the problem. People who just slap a nanoreef together, thinking it's going to be simplicity itself because they read on the internet that it is, and because it's cheaper, are the ones who quit the most, having had no real investment in their systems and also because they of course FAIL the most. A few people doing it right have a much lower environmental impact than hordes doing it wrong. ( or hordes doing it right, for that matter )

NOW do you see why I'm so against nanos for noobs, and the promotion of same?

There ARE several groups working very hard to shut this hobby down completely, and one of these days, if this trend continues, they are going to have enough evidence, in the form of failure rates, to put a serious hurting on us. Again. We MUST do what we can to prevent those failures, and while education and training are ideally very useful tools for that, your own attitude demonstrates why they alone won't work.

Oh, and finally, while I'm on a roll, all fishkeeping is the same. The big differences between fresh and salt are artificial and all in your mind. It's simply a matter of range. All the same things happen, but in different ways in different ranges, which means that learning to keep one type really does help you learn how to keep another. You are looking at fresh and salt as two completely different things, when in fact they are not different at all. Once you get past that you'll understand the flaws of your argument. The only extra things you have to learn when switching from one to the other are those few little ways the same processes are carried out differently, and how to account for them in practice. Piece of cake.