The Tao of Marine Aquaria--Tips for Our Hobby and Life
Adam H. Whitlock

Continued from page 2

Lesson Seven: Only Bad Things Happen Fast

Most people are familiar with Murphy's Law: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. I propose a corollary for the marine aquarium hobby--Only bad things happen fast. Here is some of my supporting evidence. It can take hours to fill a tank with water, but only seconds for a leak to destroy your living room. It takes weeks to establish a good biological filter, but only seconds to destroy it with a freshwater rinse or incautious application of an antibiotic. It takes months or years to establish a healthy and stable ecosystem in your aquarium, but only seconds to introduce an unquarantined fish infested with parasites. See my point?

Part of the seasoning process for new marine aquarists is coming to grips with the fact that Murphy will always be your silent partner. That doesn't mean we have to make things easy for him, though. By relying more on unfailing physical principals (like gravity) and less on machinery (like pumps), by depending more on Mother Nature (as in using live rock) and less on technology (like fancy external biological filters), by maintaining proper vigilance, and by practicing emergencies, we can make Murphy work for the entertainment he enjoys at our expense.

Patience is one of the "good things" that doesn't happen fast. To do things right, you have to increase your knowledge, plan carefully, and implement accordingly. Expecting to start from scratch and set up an aquarium over the weekend is a recipe for disaster. Are you going to do your biological filtration inside or outside of your tank? If the power goes out, where will your biological filtration be in relation to your metabolizing fish? If you have a sump and the power goes out, where will the water go? Where will it go when the power comes back on? How about when a big piece of your tang's lettuce breaks free and drifts against your overflow? If you haven't taken the time to play and practice this "What if?" game, and then taken steps to prevent the resultant disasters, you're making it too easy for our friend Murphy.

Don't slap your system together. Design it and then implement the design. Build in redundancy and buffers. Assume the worst and practice what you can (like simulating a power outage once a week, at a minimum). Observe your system carefully, getting to know its quirks and personality. Know the warning signs of misbehaving equipment and of animals in the early stages of disease. And always act quickly to correct things gone awry, because the only thing faster than the advent of a bad situation is a bad situation going from bad to worse.

Lesson Eight: Patience is a Virtue

In all the hustle and bustle of modern life, the value of patience is often overlooked. It took Nature millions of years to create the imponderable complexity and beauty of the coral reef. We should take a tip.

The concept of patience must be properly understood and bounded to be useful. Figuring out the bounds of patience comes with experience, but experience can't be built without patience. This paradox is the principal challenge to attaining a proper understanding of patience. Confused yet? Well, I'll try to explain...if you'll be patient.

At the very beginning of your quest to become a successful marine aquarist (and this moment can occur at any time in your career of fish or reef keeping), you have to come to an understanding of the time scales involved in the hobby. Trying to keep a slice of the ocean alive in your living room or den is not an afternoon project. If you don't intend to stay in the hobby for a very long time (a single fish can live for twelve years and a properly maintained coral will outlast you for centuries), don't start. If, on the other hand, you think you have what it takes to embark on the incredible journey of living with a marine aquarium, then accept that it (and you) will grow and improve over the years. Given that fact, you have plenty of time to go slowly, learn as much as you can, and build your system gradually and carefully.

Stop and think about what you just read. Can you feel all that time stretching out before you? Can you feel the pressure to perfect your system this afternoon melt away? Are you feeling calm, yet determined to do your best and immerse yourself in the beauty of your aquarium? Good. You have learned the first lesson of patience.

Now that you've put your hobby into the proper temporal perspective, you probably realize that you have plenty of time to read all you can, talk to anyone who will listen, and set up your system right the first time to house the animals you really want and who will get along with each other. Ah, the animals; the whole point of the endeavor. Don't rush them, either. Establish the system, then add the animals slowly--after a proper quarantine, of course. Don't jump ahead of your plan and buy impulsively. Instead, use your time to observe what you already have. Does everyone have a hiding place? Are they eating enough? Is their color good? Any spots, frayed fins, or odd behavior like scratching? No? Good. Make this careful observation a daily habit, because one day, as sure as the sun will rise, something will be amiss and it will be time to learn another lesson about patience.

Having taken the time to learn about your aquatic housemates, you'll be able to detect early on when something doesn't look right. You'll want to take action right away, but remember to be patient. Be sure you have properly diagnosed the problem before you act. A wrong remedy can be worse than no remedy at all. A scratching fish may have parasites, or it may be scratching an itch. One calls for a stressful treatment with copper; the other for a shrug of the shoulders. So, as agonizing as it may be, take the time to confirm the real situation. Be sure, then act swiftly. Also, discriminate between what has to be done immediately to keep your animals alive and what only hurts your pride to postpone. If the sides of the tank need cleaning, but your significant other is complaining that he or she hasn't seen you in days, clean the tank tomorrow.

With time, the boundaries of patience will become better defined and your understanding of the virtue will become more complete. When it has, pass it on to a beginner; but remember, be patient!

Lesson Nine: Buyer Beware

Have you ever marveled at the endless variety of solutions marketed in stores and catalogs for every aquarium product you've ever heard of? There are products to stop ich, eliminate hair algae, break down nitrates, and increase the carrying capacity of your tank. With all these miracles and so many store owners offering them to the hobbyist, why isn't keeping a marine aquarium a simple, care-free, and trouble-free pastime? Because most products don't work and most sellers don't care.

Our capitalist society is responsible for our freedom and our high standard of living, but it has a dark side, too. Just as a lion on the savanna must kill antelope to survive, citizens in the countries of the free world must sell something in order to eat. A person hungry enough (or greedy enough) will sell anything, whether it has any intrinsic value or not. No one is forcing you, the consumer, to buy worthless products, so the sellers can go to sleep with a clear conscience. They offered a line of products that might have helped, and you chose to buy them. If you were wronged by anyone, you did it to yourself. Shame on you, you silly antelope!

Nonsense, right? You came to the store or opened the catalog in a desperate search for salvation for your pets. Realizing you were in over your head, you threw yourself on the mercy of the vendor and relied upon his or her superior knowledge about the hobby. Well, guess what? Stocking a warehouse or taking care of hundreds of fish and corals for the week it takes before they are sold is a vastly different endeavor than keeping the same six fish alive for twelve years or keeping the same coral colonies alive indefinitely. Would you ask a dog owner how to care for a pregnant iguana? Then why ask a large-scale fish holder or dry-goods retailer how to maintain a small, stable, aquatic environment?

Now, obviously, these criticisms do not apply to all vendors of aquarium supplies. I would venture to say, however, that the description applies to most of them. So, how do you protect yourself? With knowledge. You need to become the expert and the let the motto, "Buyer beware!" reverberate in your head every time you walk into a store or open a catalog. How does the store smell? Is it clean? How many "floaters" do you see? Are any of the fish scratching? Are ten competing lines of products, each claiming to be "the best", arrayed side by side on the shelves or pages, or has the owner done some experimentation so that he or she knows what works and can make recommendations based on personal experience?

Evaluate the knowledge and skill of the salespeople before you ask for or take their advice. Talk to other customers in the store. Do they seem to know what they are doing, or do they patronize the store because of the "great deals" they get on all the latest "stuff"? To beat a dead horse, continue your education by reading everything about the hobby you can get your hands on. Join a local club so you can talk to fellow hobbyists and not people who depend on your purchases to support their families. Soon, you'll realize that you know more than the majority of store owners and you'll be able to see through the smoke screens. You'll then be able to discriminate between innovative new products and new marketing schemes designed to separate you from your paycheck.

Lesson Ten: Pet Rocks Were Dumb

Let's face it: unless you were the marketing genius behind them, pet rocks were dumb. Most fads are equally devoid of value. The opposite of a fad is a tradition or a sound practice. The challenge in evaluating new products and techniques is to determine on which side of the line they fall. Are you witnessing the dawn of a new era in marine aquarium keeping, or are you seeing a brilliant marketing strategy to get rid of surplus stockpiles of chemicals or plastic? Are you reading about a discovery that will really improve the lives of your pets, or are you lapping up the untested, quasi-scientific ramblings of someone who wants their name or product to become a household word?

If you live by the sea, go take a look at it (if you aren't close, take the trip in your mind-it will do you some good). Tomorrow, go there again. Tell me if you see any new filters purifying the water. My guess is you won't. When Nature finds something that works, she sticks with it. You should do the same . Are all of your aquarium friends tearing down their tanks to install nitrate-reducing plenums? Are you feeling left out and left behind? Why? Are your nitrates completely out of control? Are your fish and invertebrates unhappy? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Let other people disrupt the lives of their animals to try out the new fad. If, after a year or more, everyone's results are excellent, the maintenance requirements appear to be low, and no one has suffered any long-term problems with a nitrate bomb sitting at the bottom of their tank, then consider setting up your next tank that way. But let other people experiment with their pets and their money. Don't chase after a fad until it has matured into a well-documented practice.

Does this mean that you should shun all new ideas and forms of artificial filtration? Of course not. We do our best to recreate in our homes a very complex ecosystem. Many problems are simple to handle, like nitrogen cycling with live rock and live sand or macro algae. Others, like the accumulation of organic compounds, are more difficult. A simple solution, foam fractionation (or "protein skimming") was invented to take advantage of the fact that dissolved organic compounds are surfactants, i.e., they are attracted to air-water interfaces. Make a lot of interfaces (bubbles), and you collect a lot of organics. It was a sound idea, but, in practice, many of the first skimmers weren't very effective. They have now been refined to the point that they really deliver on their promises. The first attempts were a fad; the best models currently available today are a tried and true aquarium tool. See the difference?

There is another type of fad: the bells and whistles variety. You needn't look far in any aquarium magazine to find complex pieces of equipment that attempt to replicate the biological processes found in the wild. They are intriguing and fun, but they are also expensive and largely unnecessary. That isn't to say that they don't have their place in the hobby, but don't let anyone convince you that you need one. Why? Read on.

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