Sponsor a tank at the zoo

[Delphinus]

In the nocturnal section of the Australia House at the Calgary Zoo, there is a small reef display in the noctural section.

It is likely something like a 50g tank, with some lava rock as base and a small collection of fish and invertebrates. I don't beleive there are any corals in there.

I would hate to criticize an institution that does so much for conservation and education in the natural sciences; but the bottom line is this is a tank that has a lot of room for improvement.

The last time I was at the zoo, I was not able to visit the conservatory so I am not certain if they still have freshwater displays in there; but at one time they did have reasonable freshwater displays in the conservatory.

So ... presumably, there are aquarists on staff at the zoo.

One idea that we discussed at the meeting, was, if there is any possibility that as a group project we could meet with these aquarists, and discuss ways on how to improve their reef display. We could discuss tank plans for a suitable reef, or suitable reef displays, we could donate frags if there was interest in such an idea, and so on.

Personally, I feel there is a great opportunity here. Calgary no longer has a public aquarium and I feel this is huge void waiting to be filled; it would increase our visibility as a community (I mean "us" as a Calgary club), it would open the door for the zoo to present many avenues of discussion and education of the issues facing the reefs today; and the bottom line is we could perhaps have a voice in improving the existing display.

I thus, now open the floor for more discussion and invite comments, and suggestions. Of course, this is a "highly hypothetical" project at this point, and of course would allow be completely dependent upon the zoo's interest in such an idea. We may need to increase our own profile as a group before the zoo would perceive any credibility in what we have to offer. Does anybody know someone who works at the zoo, so that we can one day open the door to "open discussions" with them?