KingOfAll_Tyrants
New member
Hey all,
I'm a bit curious to hear about the level of artificiality of our aquarium setups. So, I have a completely hypothetical question.
Usually, with good reason, one's not supposed to release aquarium animals/plants back into the wild, and it's thus best to think about keeping the animal for its lifespan, or if not humanely euthanize them
1. non native fish, etc. could become established locally - witness the uncontrolled populations of goldfish in many parts of the US, the Lionfish in the Atlantic, etc. (IMO a very convincing reason)
2. non native fish could carry diseases that local aquatic creatures are not used to (IMO an even more convincing reason)
3. most non native animals cannot survive where most hobbyists release them - most tropical fish (to say nothing of reef inverts) cannot survive the winter. So, if you release them, you are condemning them to freeze to death, if not starve to death by being unused to the local food, or being unaware of what they can eat, or being easy vicims of predation (quite convincing as well)
4. it's generally illegal to release non native species (as a result of #1 and #2).
But, what if *everything* you have is locally collected from the same area? *****NOTE: I am not advocating this, or planning to do this; I just ask to understand*****
For example (I deliberately use a very impractical example, as well as an example that violates multiple collection laws, because I want this to remain fictional. Again, ***this is impractical and illegal and am asking this only for information sake****), let's say I live in a house right on Hanauma Bay, Oahu, Hawaii and I built a fairly standard 200 gallon reef tank in my living room. I collect LR and various corals into my tank, as well as a few fish, from the bay and grow them in my tank. I add nothing but animals, collected from the bay into the tank. I get my water from the bay for water changes (no artificial seawater), run a skimmer and 'fuge with local live sand.
After, say, 7 years of running (and without any tank crashes; it remains healthy and thriving) I need to leave my fictional house, and decide to go back to the bay, find areas where there are bleached or otherwise dead corals of the same types, and put my fictional corals there, release the fish, carefully place the live rock where it can thrive, and dump the live sand.
Will the bacteria, etc. that my healthy animals carry be identical to what's in the bay, or is there a chance that they've gotten unnatural concentrations/quantities of something either commonly seen locally, or which would only thrive in aquarium conditions, and that releasing them would still be dangerous?
If that's the case, it seems that aquarium keeping inevitably has to deal with different sorts of risks to the animals than they typically face in the wild, even in a very closely controlled hypothetical situation like I described.
(obviously, if there's a tank crash, it seems to me it's *totally* wrong to dump the water, dead animals, etc. into the bay or even a nearby seagrass bed, since there are likely fairly dense quantities of harmful pests)
Thanks for any thoughts. Again, I am not going to do this and would not support carelessly collecting and thinking you can just throw the animal back.
I'm a bit curious to hear about the level of artificiality of our aquarium setups. So, I have a completely hypothetical question.
Usually, with good reason, one's not supposed to release aquarium animals/plants back into the wild, and it's thus best to think about keeping the animal for its lifespan, or if not humanely euthanize them
1. non native fish, etc. could become established locally - witness the uncontrolled populations of goldfish in many parts of the US, the Lionfish in the Atlantic, etc. (IMO a very convincing reason)
2. non native fish could carry diseases that local aquatic creatures are not used to (IMO an even more convincing reason)
3. most non native animals cannot survive where most hobbyists release them - most tropical fish (to say nothing of reef inverts) cannot survive the winter. So, if you release them, you are condemning them to freeze to death, if not starve to death by being unused to the local food, or being unaware of what they can eat, or being easy vicims of predation (quite convincing as well)
4. it's generally illegal to release non native species (as a result of #1 and #2).
But, what if *everything* you have is locally collected from the same area? *****NOTE: I am not advocating this, or planning to do this; I just ask to understand*****
For example (I deliberately use a very impractical example, as well as an example that violates multiple collection laws, because I want this to remain fictional. Again, ***this is impractical and illegal and am asking this only for information sake****), let's say I live in a house right on Hanauma Bay, Oahu, Hawaii and I built a fairly standard 200 gallon reef tank in my living room. I collect LR and various corals into my tank, as well as a few fish, from the bay and grow them in my tank. I add nothing but animals, collected from the bay into the tank. I get my water from the bay for water changes (no artificial seawater), run a skimmer and 'fuge with local live sand.
After, say, 7 years of running (and without any tank crashes; it remains healthy and thriving) I need to leave my fictional house, and decide to go back to the bay, find areas where there are bleached or otherwise dead corals of the same types, and put my fictional corals there, release the fish, carefully place the live rock where it can thrive, and dump the live sand.
Will the bacteria, etc. that my healthy animals carry be identical to what's in the bay, or is there a chance that they've gotten unnatural concentrations/quantities of something either commonly seen locally, or which would only thrive in aquarium conditions, and that releasing them would still be dangerous?
If that's the case, it seems that aquarium keeping inevitably has to deal with different sorts of risks to the animals than they typically face in the wild, even in a very closely controlled hypothetical situation like I described.
(obviously, if there's a tank crash, it seems to me it's *totally* wrong to dump the water, dead animals, etc. into the bay or even a nearby seagrass bed, since there are likely fairly dense quantities of harmful pests)
Thanks for any thoughts. Again, I am not going to do this and would not support carelessly collecting and thinking you can just throw the animal back.