Adding Non-Photosynthetic Corals to Your Reef
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FOURTH QUARTER 2013 I VOLUME 7 ADDING NON-PHOTOSYNTHETIC CORALS TO YOUR REEF RET TALBOt’s THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE WILD KINGS OF THE ARTHROPODS October 12-13, 2013 Reef Hobbyistreefapaloozashow.org Magazine 1 2 www.reefhobbyistmagazine.com PRODUCT SPOTLIGHT PRODUCT NEW Dosing Pump • Master unit: 2 channels IV • Slave units: 3 channels ESHOPPS.COM ESHOPPS.COM Reef Hobbyist Magazine 3 FOURTH QUARTER 2013 | Volume 7 featureS Copyright© 2013 Reef Hobbyist Magazine. All rights reserved. THE gooD, THE baD, ANNOUNCEMENTS AND THE WILD 6 Ret Talbot is an internationally known Reef Hobbyist Magazine is proud to authority and writer on marine fisheries. The benefits collaborate with ThomasVisionReef to of a healthy marine ornamental fishery to developing bring you Tank Wars, a YouTube series that nations should not be minimized but are hard to will showcase aquarium tanks from around appreciate unless you read this thought-provoking the world battling against eachother in five piece. different weight (gallon) classes. Hobbyists can vote for their favorite set-ups and losers will be eliminated until a winner is crowned in each weight class. Tune in to youtube.com/ThomasVisionReef...ARE S HRIMPFISHES: YOU READY FOR BATTLE? The series begins early 2014! UNCOMMON, biZARRE, 12 AND easY? RHM SPONSORED EVENTS Matt Wandell is a marine biologist at Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco. Shrimpfish are one (latest issue available at these events) of the most unusual looking of all fishes and have • Reef-A-Palooza: October 12-13, Costa Mesa, CA – reefapaloozashow.org been considered difficult to keep. This article • Mountain West Reef Fest: November 2, Salt Lake City, UT – debunks some of the myths surrounding shrimpfish husbandry and provides information on how you mountainwestreeffest.com can successfully keep shrimpfish in your reef. • Aquatic Experience: November 15-17, Chicago, IL – aquaticexperience.org • Jax Reef Conference: December 8, Jacksonville, FL – jaxreef.org A 500G MISSOURI • SWFMAS Conf.: April 11-12, 2014, Ft. Myers, FL – reefconference.com MASTERPIECE • Reef-A-Palooza Orlando : April 26-27, 2014, Orlando, FL – raporlando.com 18 David Hurd has created a masterful 500g reef tank. Here David shares his beautiful FREE ONLINE SUBSCRIPTION SIGN-UP reef and his one main secret for coral success and happiness. Be the first to know when a new issue is released online! Scan this QR code to sign up for our online subscription and you’ll receive an alert with article previews, new product releases, KINGS OF and a link to the latest issue as soon as it’s online! THE artHROPODS: 26 AN INCREDIBLE MYRIAD OF SHRIMP WANT RHM IN YOUR STORE? Gordon Greenley is a shrimp breeder currently Increase your store’s foot traffic and sales by offering Reef working with Blue Banded Coral Shrimp. Learn Hobbyist Magazine to your valued customers! We help you educate about some of the most exotic shrimp in the hobby your customers even when they’re not in your store. Plus, we never and why some attractive species are not reef-safe. publish etailer ads! Contact one of our distributors below or email us at [email protected] to get stocked. • A&M Aquatics – www.amaquatics.com ATTEMPTS AT BREEDING • All Seas Marine – www.allseaslax.com THE LYretail ANTHIAS • DFW Aquarium Supply – www.dfwaquarium.com Alex Johnson is one of the leading 34 • Exotic Reef Imports – www.exoticreefimports.com pioneers of marine fish breeding in the UK. Alex has • Pacific Aqua Farms – www.pacificaquafarms.com bred clowns, seahorses, and more and now details her attempts at breeding the Lyretail Anthias. • Quality Marine – www.qualitymarine.com • Reef Nutrition – www.reefnutrition.com • Segrest Farms – www.segrestfarms.com 38 ON THE COVER COME VISIT US ONLINE www.reefhobbyistmagazine.com ADD ING NON-PHotosYNTHETIC Find full access to RHM archives. CORALS to YOUR reeF Download any issue in PDF for your PC or iPad. – AN INTRODUCTION & Sign up for a FREE online subscription. HUSBANDRY GUIDE www.facebook.com/reefhobbyistmag Ngai On Young is a self-professed NPS freak. From acquisition through captive reproduction, this RHM Staff article covers critical topics for President Harry Tung Art Director Yoony Byun anyone interested in keeping these gorgeous corals. Executive Editor Jim Adelberg Graphic Designer II Dave Tran [email protected] Photography Advisor Sabine Penisson Cover image by author. COMMENTS OR SUGGESTIONS? [email protected] 4 www.reefhobbyistmagazine.com THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE WILD RET TALBOT or the past several years, I have had the opportunity to explore the source country side of the marine aquarium trade. One of the goals of those explorations has been to provide a window through which aquarists can view a side of the trade that is typically at best out-of-sight-out- Fof-mind and at worst intentionally less than transparent given the unsustainable and illegal practices that continue to plague the collection side of the industry. BACKGROUND AND PERSPECTIVE My experience has led me to believe sustainable marine aquarium fisheries can be one of the best resource extraction industries when While I’m professionally interested in the big picture at the it comes to appropriate socio-economic development and creating confluence of fisheries, science, socio-economic development, real economic incentive to conserve reefs. Eliminating these and conservation, it has always been my personal hope as an fisheries can create a vacuum that, because of an increasingly aquarist that a better understanding of where the majority of marine globalized world with fewer and fewer blank spots on the map, aquarium animals originate would lead to some aquarists using their will most certainly be filled with other resource extraction industries purchasing power to support a sustainable, equitable, and legal such as mining, logging, and other less sustainable forms of trade. To me, it is not at all unlike what commonly happens now commercial fishing. In many cases, the ensuing development will with coffee, lumber products, and seafood. These are industries be one that lessens fisher communities’ connection with marine that, while not without their issues, have all found a market share resources, as younger members of the community are lured to interested in seeing sustainability and fair trade front and center. cities with notions of employment, a mobile phone, a moped, and While some aquarists have responded to the often unpleasant the other opportunities afforded by modernity. In the worst cases, realities of marine aquarium fisheries in source countries like the environmental impacts of resource extraction at the hands of Indonesia and Philippines by advocating a trade dependent almost foreign entities with no long term stake in the area destroys the reefs wholly on captive-bred animals (much like the freshwater trade is), through destructive fishing practices, clear-cutting, or any number some of my most profound experiences throughout the smaller of other environmentally unsound practices. The end result is too developing island nations of the Indo-Pacific have led me to believe often a forced abandonment of a longstanding healthy relationship that reducing the trade’s connection to the people and reefs of the between humans and reef resources. region would be a very great loss from both an environmental and socio-economic perspective. Fishing is a way of life for many coastal villages in smaller developing island nations. Certainly fishing provides food, but I have also While the stated goal of a marine aquarium trade based solely on seen how it provides a social milieu – a complex tapestry with captive-bred animals is often to alleviate pressure on embattled threads reaching far back into past generations and deeply into reef ecosystems, I fear the wholesale elimination of marine cultural understandings of religion, philosophy, and environmental aquarium fisheries in the name of sustainability, conservation, or stewardship. I have a carved tuna on the wall in my office that I any other green moniker could actually have the opposite effect. was given while researching aquarium fisheries in Solomon Islands. 6 www.reefhobbyistmagazine.com Villagers in Marau Sound, Solomon Islands, who have made nearly all of their Collecting fish for the marine aquarium trade in Solomon Islands. income from mariculture and wild harvest for the marine aquarium trade. The tuna, carved from dark wood, is speckled with shell inlay that, it looked to the few outsiders who experienced it. But the world it was explained to me, glimmer and flash when illuminated by is increasingly smaller owing to the great weight of globalization firelight. “The fish, they come alive and remind us,” I was told by aided and abetted by technology. These remote villages like the an elder showing me similar fishes mounted inside a ceremonial one I visited in Papua New Guinea will not remain closed systems structure. To say that fishing is near-essential to many fishing forever, and how they develop is ever more tied to the decisions we communities is to say something far more profound than reiterating make at the point of sale when purchasing everything from paper the fact that fish provide over half of the animal protein consumed in products to seafood to aquarium animals. many developing island nations. Remove fishing and, to put it quite bluntly, everything changes. As the more remote developing island nations take their first tentative steps into global markets, there are a plethora of pitfalls WHEN CULTURES COLLIDE and perils waiting at every decision point along the road to so-called development. Sometimes these dangers arise as a result of the I once visited a village in Papua New Guinea where there were three villages in close proximity. One village was primarily focused on hunting, another on gardening, and the third, the one I visited, on fishing. Up until very recently, there was no real monetary system in any of these three villages, with transactions being almost entirely handled through bartering – fish for vegetables, vegetables for meat, meat for fish, and so on.