What can you do to save your hobby?

[delta]

As hobbyist what can we do to save our Hobby?

IMO band together getting educated and use any resources we have. I have Been talking with alot of people about this and here are a few things that were mention to me.


Banding together

Educating each other about the impact of the hobby on the environment and how we as a group(all reefers) can make a difference.

Not blaming the stores and importers for our continued purchases of wild livestock and refusal to pay more for Aquacultured item.

The need to support Aquaculture in th is country and not places like Fiji, this will in turn make it more affordable for hobbyist as well as reduce the impact of the hobby on the environment.

Legislation, if passed, like Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act – H.R. 669 will not effect just hobbyist, it will effect many lives and jobs and businesses will be lost as swell as our hobby

H.R 669 may not pass now but sooner or later the groups fighting for these changes will formulate a bill that will pass. Will we be ready?


These are a few things I have heard in discussing the currently proposed bill,
what have you heard? what do you think? What can be done?

Lets hear it

[Blueflu1]

might be too late, but maybe at the meeting, everyone can sign a petition to send in. Makes a big impact when you see a whole bunch of signatures on a petition.

[Behrmon]

I would like to hear from some of the "insiders" (BRS sponsors) re. their take on this bill and others that have come before it as well as ongoing state level bills. Maybe they have some further insight that could help us out and in turn help themselves out as well?

[JayM]

The important thing here is to keep it professional. Nothing makes a politician's eyes glaze over faster than hearing a rant.

[SharkLover]

A BRS Approved Tank cycling guide would be awesome. *stickied*

Topics included:
Purchasing (benefits of buying used versus new in retrospec to time. I know i've saved at least 1,000 + buying used however it cost me over 3 months of searching for parts before I found them all. )

Research ( benefits of taking the time during the purchasing phase to weed out the importance of certain items for example inhabitants requiring high lighting or low lighting may steer you to avoid power compact lighting, electricity bills may steer you towards T5's or just plain SPS Lovers going for Metal halides)

Cycling Phase (Importance of avoiding inhabitant introduction and the nitrogen cycle, in short) Take these few weeks to google your brains away at which inhabitants work well together. I've found a fish that seems peaceful may become agressive if you need to reduce feeding for example to fight some nuisance. Take all into consideration.

Proper tank management etique.- Dosing magnesium and calcium on different days for example. Importance of keeping Alkalinity either high (near 12) or low (near 7 is it?) in retrospec to your inhabitants.


Lastly; Community Support. - Importance of community support before beginning the approved cycling guide to a healthy tank which starts at the purchasing stage but really should start at the community support level.

[fishindude]

might be too late, but maybe at the meeting, everyone can sign a petition to send in. Makes a big impact when you see a whole bunch of signatures on a petition.

Is there any way to do an electronic petition? Maybe start a thread and email the signatures?

[pvh]

AquaCultureFrags are the way to go. ;)

[wsonner]

I've been talking for a while about the "perceived" impact of our hobby and our need to police ourselves. My take is that if we don't regulate ourselves then someone else will regulate us and it will very likely be based on what they perceive our impact to be rather than on actual impact. If someone else does the regulating you can bet we won't like it!

Ok, so yes, I do have an agenda that is centered on selling products, but my products (to date just the AccliMate) will intentionally be focused on this theme...reduce our impact, real or perceived. This was why I named the company Reef Gently. It is not just a name it really is an imperative if our hobby is going to continue. Here are some areas that concern me:

Plastic bags

Someone is going to do the math here. I talked to a guy at MAX this month that actually DID do the math and the numbers were staggering. Think about how many attendants work at a mid-size LFS...then multiply by the number of sales each makes in a day and consider that most places now double bag each purchase. Do it for ALL LFS in 50 states. It's huge.

When someone does that math we need to be able to show evidence of how we are actively working to reduce or eliminate this dependence on bags. Keep in mind too that retailers incur a very real cost here which they invariably pass on.

Aquaculture

I cannot believe the success people are having in this area. It is awesome and I believe we are on the right track toward a sustainable resource. Here again, when people see the videos and photos of reefs being decimated one of the directions they will point is at us. The stories of cyanide and other destructive collection techniques will stick in their minds and they won't look at the facts. They will knee-jerk and send more bills like HR 669 our way. I think we really need to aim for the day when we are almost completely self sustaining because I am terribly afraid that this is coming.

Successful Reef Keeping

We need to be good at what we do. When fish and corals die we replace them. The fewer that die do to mishandling and inexperience the less we need to revisit wild habitats for replacement. Tools and resources that inform are key here. I think that this too is an area where we are really growing. But still, the ratio of people in clubs like BRS versus the total number of people keeping tanks is WAY too small. What that means to me is too many people are out there winging it. We need to drive people to our clubs by advertising (word of mouth) and by BEING APPROACHABLE. By doing this we can help educate a greater number of hobbyists in correct techniques and all the other hullaballoo that goes on here.

I hope this makes sense. I tend to just spew what's on my mind...thanks for listening.


Wes

[coralcor]

i think fish import should be ok. especially salt water ones. because they will die in the fresh water so you cant release them. and they will died in the sea too. because its too cold around here. and i agree with everything ^^

so i less im just talking out loud. but just ban the reptiles and snakes. our hobby shouldn't be effected.

and Aquaculture is the way to go. and tank raised fish.
if we dont we will all be braking the law. and we will need to have tanks in the bacement and it would be like the drug trade in bigger cities. just with coral. there would be a new show...... coral cops

[jojo1n2]

Maybe one or two days every couple of months, get everybody to cut there lighting cycle in half for the day. Just think of the energy savings that could have, especially if your running halides. It would be a coordinated effort, but it could be done. As far as the tanks getting less light, just think of it as a couple of cloudy days on the reef

[Shenlung]

Plastic bags

Someone is going to do the math here. I talked to a guy at MAX this month that actually DID do the math and the numbers were staggering. Think about how many attendants work at a mid-size LFS...then multiply by the number of sales each makes in a day and consider that most places now double bag each purchase. Do it for ALL LFS in 50 states. It's huge.

When someone does that math we need to be able to show evidence of how we are actively working to reduce or eliminate this dependence on bags. Keep in mind too that retailers incur a very real cost here which they invariably pass on.


This impact would be cut down by either buying the acrylic fish transporter/drip chamber that Wes sells, or even by something as simple as reusing bags. Anyone who saw me at the meeting goings after my frag grab bags saw my ziplock filled with folded Petco® bags from my freshwater purchases. Undo the rubber band instead of tearing the bag and then rinse them and let them dry, they can be used for frags repeatedly. Since starting this "hobby" I have not purchased bags ever. If everyone either tied bags with an easy to undo knot, or used rubber bands/twist ties, it would help ALOT.

Aquaculture

I cannot believe the success people are having in this area. It is awesome and I believe we are on the right track toward a sustainable resource. Here again, when people see the videos and photos of reefs being decimated one of the directions they will point is at us. The stories of cyanide and other destructive collection techniques will stick in their minds and they won't look at the facts. They will knee-jerk and send more bills like HR 669 our way. I think we really need to aim for the day when we are almost completely self sustaining because I am terribly afraid that this is coming.

I absolutely agree with this point as well, new morphs are occuring virtually daily with Zoas(maybe others, but my focus is zoas, so I speak of what I have experience with :p), and they aren't coming from the reef...does anyone think "Tubs Blue Zoas" came naturally that way from the reef? They probably are a morph by manipulating some vague parameter in an aquaculture tank, causing the zoas to morph, and that is the future of this hobby. It's non-invasive, non-destructive, and so easy to propagate corals in personal tanks, the very idea of having to go to the reef for ANYTHING anymore is kind of mind-boggling. The only time we should have to go to the reef for anything at all, is to get a new species that has been discovered to propagate a FRAG of that species to get it into the open market. There should no longer be any reason to tear apart a reef to get mass quantities of any resources, as virtually everything can be either propagated or produced, including LR, LS, SPS, LPS, Chemicals, Salt, Fish and anything else I've forgotten. Boycott harvesters, and they'll shift to aquaculturing P.D.Q.

Successful Reef Keeping

We need to be good at what we do. When fish and corals die we replace them. The fewer that die do to mishandling and inexperience the less we need to revisit wild habitats for replacement. Tools and resources that inform are key here. I think that this too is an area where we are really growing. But still, the ratio of people in clubs like BRS versus the total number of people keeping tanks is WAY too small. What that means to me is too many people are out there winging it. We need to drive people to our clubs by advertising (word of mouth) and by BEING APPROACHABLE. By doing this we can help educate a greater number of hobbyists in correct techniques and all the other hullaballoo that goes on here.

+1 here too...wish I had done some flippin research before jumping in neck deep, I regret the past, and wish the word was out a bit stronger, I might not have made mistakes that caused the loss of many good corals due to operator ignorance.

[Greg Hiller]

I think the good news is that we now know how to vegetatively propagate a huge number of species of corals. IMO, even if they outlawed the importation of coral at this point it wouldn't make that much difference. You could still have a very nice tank. At this time my entire 400 gallon system only has two corals in it that I have not propagated, and nearly everything in the tank has grown from small frags.

Unfortunately, we still have a much farther distance to go for raising more species of fish and motile inverts. If they ban import I'm sure the breeders would have much more incentive, but it would probably be quite a number of years (if ever) before we had the type of diversity of fish that we have now in our tanks.

[buarcos]

Is there any way to do an electronic petition? Maybe start a thread and email the signatures?

I just signed one non-reef related here: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/ . There are a couple other sites like this out there too. I'm sure it would be able to collect a decent amount of signatures if it gets passed around here and other major reef forums.

[swreef103]

i really like this section here and that's what i'm doing myself..having a reliable source besides the ocean is a really good thing and aquaculturing corals will be very beneficial in the future... people tend to say that saltwater tanks are to hard to care for and i just laugh.i try to educate as many people as i can on how to properly take care for these unique eco-systems so that we can ensure great livestock for our next generation of aquarists in the years to come....i notice a great increase in the price slowly increasing and this can tend to drive customers away.this is something i'm trying to avoid myself which is why i am in the process of building up as many various types of living sps,lps and soft exotic corals i can.i looking forward to opening my own retail store soon too..

[Sportsmann]

IMHO our hobby is more affected by globoal warming and acidic reef deterioration than by mining. Just like over fishing the cod/haddock off georgias bank there has to be some regulations and minimum lengths per se.
AquaCultureFrags are the way to go. Trade away...