OMG! I hear sirens!

[One_Divided]

http://www.beautifulreef.com/gallery.html

This is what happens when you don't do your homework. This is only a 65 gallon!

It has like 4-5 tangs, a moorish idol, bleached and dyed anemones, couple goniporas and to top it all off, it has little plastic sunken ships!

I feel bad for the inhabitantas of this tank..

[ 06 September 2002, 09:59: Message edited by: One_Divided ]

[ruck'n'reefer]

But the sea horse corral, and the sunken paddlewheeler, are cool !! Don't you have a similar ceramic clam, Troy! ;) I think Marc has a sunken treasure chest with bubbles in his tank! :rolleyes: I have a dead shark with a suba diver in mine!! :D

Some people!!!

[ 06 September 2002, 17:33: Message edited by: Ruck'n'reefer ]

[StirCrazy]

Originally posted by One_Divided:
[QB
top it all off, it has little plastic sunken ships!
[/QB]

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">you say this like they are a bad thing.. they are decoration and some are cool and they are not harmfull to the fish or corals so there is nothing wrong with them.. you are critisizing someones idea of what is nice looking because you don't like it..

Hell I think i am going to go get one of thoes treasur chests that open and close .. just to show how little reading I did.. :D :D

Steve

[One_Divided]

heheh I say that becuase it seems like we are all trying to create the most natural looking environment as possible. In my opinion, when you put little plastic treasure chests in, it's a little unatural looking..that is, unless a tang is really the size of a sunken ship! lol

[Canadian]

Hey, if you want to get technical, 99% of the reef tanks you see are the furthest thing from being "the most natural looking environment . . . possible." Walls of little rocks with a mix-and-match collection of corals from around the world with a matching collection of fish and other inverts to boot - not quite "natural" by any stretch of the imagination.

It all comes down to the individual hobbyist's idea of aesthetics. While I certainly agree that the ship is tacky, I have to admit that I much prefer the "Japanese style" reef tanks to the average tank, and I don't think there's any arguing that those tanks are basically underwater bonsai ;)

[AJ_77]

Just curious, but what would you guys take out of that tank to make it acceptable? If it had a few less fish and items of questionable taste, would it pass muster? Are there visible health issues, or is it the long-term effects of over-crowding and bad aquascaping that cause the alarm?

Is the fact that they have what looks like a large pipe organ skeleton a concern? Do you suppose that as one colony is lost to negligence, another is added? Isn't this sort of thing what keeps MO's and LFS's in business? How many corals are sold week after week to replenish systems like this, and systems like our own?

I agree that as conscionable aquarists we should be "trying to create the most natural looking environment as possible," but when you seen a natural reef, the scope and the wonder of it, isn't it plain that we're fooling ourselves? Even a really good public aquarium, while it gives us a brief thrill, tugs keenly at the nagging frustration of our separation from the source of such beauty.

I guess I'm wondering if we have any rightful say in what others do in their quest for their own piece of "beautiful reef." I love my own tiny water-box; it's a fistful of paradise.

Cheers,

AJ

[StirCrazy]

I think if we were to put all the reefs in a room and look at them... especially the ones that are not online, we might be surprised on what the "Average" reef actually looks like. We the online reefing communities are a minority in both numbers and what a reef/sw tank should look like.

Think about it... for some reason the fish stores keep bringing in dyed corals, big angles, and tangs, Moorish idols, groupers ect.. That isn't because they all die... it is because people are buying them for there tanks. And as far as deep sand beds... oh we are just crazy for wanting to spend that money to cover the bottom of the tank...

Same with those 300 fish tank decorations you can get at bigger stores... they don't bring them in because they look pretty on the shelves... people buy them and put them in thee tanks..

When I was younger I had what was considered a "reef”... it was a 48 gal tank with crushed coral (big) and crushed oyster shells for a substrate, a bunch of lava rock and tuffa for the rock, and more fish than I will ever admit to :eek: now no one could crucify you for over stocking or keeping fish that were going to die as they were "Just fish" and they weren’t to bad to replace.. That was part of the mentality of having a fish tank back then... well after about a year and a few more fish I got tired of all the damn algae and tore it down and went back to fresh water. What is my point? Well my point is that was a nice "Reef" tank back then... since then through the internet and my fresh water tanks I have re-thought my ideas and taken on the ideals of what "we" (our limited number) call a reef tank, but I still go to the fish stores and see that exact same mentality that I saw some 20ish years ago, and I see people buying the same way that I bought 20 years ago and I realize that what we call "responsible reefers" are few and far between. there are even people on the boards that are only there to get help when something goes wrong and could care less about what there fish are going through .. Just as long as they are pretty and swim... and there are people who have 10 big fish in a 33 gal and are proud of how it looks...

I am just rambling here but what I am trying to show is that while there have been advances in the Technology and methods of fish keeping; there have been few advances in the average mentality of fish keeping.

Steve

[Troy F]

I don't care if someone's reef looks natural or if it looks contrived and of mixed biotopes. I do hope that people will make ethical choices when stocking their tanks. Take a good look at the pictures and tell me that the owner of that tank has read about, and understands, what impact this hobby has. Because none of us "really" come close to replicating a natural setting doesn't mean that we don't have a moral obligation to provide the best care and make reasonably ethical choices when stocking a tank.

Do we have a say in what others keep in their "boxes"? Nope. But hopefully we can educate people (through mediums like this) and stop people from selling dyed corals and (next to) impossible to keep, slow growing corals. That is perfectly within our capabilities and is the reason we seek to help and educate one another on these boards. And if we can't educate them, we should bash their brains in and run them out of their respective countries [img]smile.gif[/img] . Spare the rod, spoil the child or so the saying goes.

[Troy F]

Yup, pretty bad. Sad thing is that although it's frowned upon by the educated reefers who read and frequent bulletin boards I doubt that it's far from what the average aquarist is doing.

[ruck'n'reefer]

Well put Troy, and I agree! It is up to us to try to help others! I should try a little harder.