"It is inhumane to deprive any animal of an element it regards as critical to its well-being, and totally naive to expect normal behavior in its absence. "[Dr. Paul Loiselle]
This sig file statement is on the profile of @Byron, one of our most knowledgeable members, and every time I read it, it strikes me as one of the best statements I have read about our hobby. I hope it pushes people to look into the work of Dr Paul Loiselle, but I also hope it makes us stop and consider.
Let's take sand into consideration, since a lot of recent postings have made some of us think about it..
Well rounded, small grained smooth sand is really important to a lot of our fish. A lot of species we like are filter feeders, not equipped with chomping teeth but adapted for sifting and filtering their food out of sand. Corydoras are an example - they can live in bare bottomed tanks, but we can live in empty warehouses. Would we want to? If you give them a proper substrate, they live more naturally, and you will benefit from watching how they sift their food, and how they live in a habitat designed for them.
Geophagus? Geo is earth, and phagus means eaters. These Cichlids sift sand all day long, eating in much the same way as Corys. Geophagus, Satanoperca, Apistogramma, Mikrogeophagus and others need sand to be able to express their natural behaviours. Don't make these fish fit your plans. If you take on the responsibility of keeping them, adapt to them.
I've seen debates on what makes an 'advanced' aquarist. It isn't the number of tanks or the rarity of the species kept. It's showing the ability to adjust your set up to take the needs of the fish you keep into account. If you can look at the differences between species and try to design aquariums to give them the best conditions possible, you just became an expert. Everything else is just gathering and remembering info to fill the files in your head.
At one point, the eastern sand darter was one of the most common fish found close to my old home on the island of Montreal. Into the 1950s, before my time, they were apparently all along the sandy shores in enormous numbers. Then, in those days of no environmental assessments and free market development plans, the channels of the river were changed and landfill was dumped in from mega projects, altering the shorelines. I spent many hours on the banks of that river, and I have never seen a live sand darter. The sand is buried under silt. The fish are locally extinct and endangered along the rest of their range. If you're setting up a riverbank beach tank, make sure it's more like before than after!
This sig file statement is on the profile of @Byron, one of our most knowledgeable members, and every time I read it, it strikes me as one of the best statements I have read about our hobby. I hope it pushes people to look into the work of Dr Paul Loiselle, but I also hope it makes us stop and consider.
Let's take sand into consideration, since a lot of recent postings have made some of us think about it..
Well rounded, small grained smooth sand is really important to a lot of our fish. A lot of species we like are filter feeders, not equipped with chomping teeth but adapted for sifting and filtering their food out of sand. Corydoras are an example - they can live in bare bottomed tanks, but we can live in empty warehouses. Would we want to? If you give them a proper substrate, they live more naturally, and you will benefit from watching how they sift their food, and how they live in a habitat designed for them.
Geophagus? Geo is earth, and phagus means eaters. These Cichlids sift sand all day long, eating in much the same way as Corys. Geophagus, Satanoperca, Apistogramma, Mikrogeophagus and others need sand to be able to express their natural behaviours. Don't make these fish fit your plans. If you take on the responsibility of keeping them, adapt to them.
I've seen debates on what makes an 'advanced' aquarist. It isn't the number of tanks or the rarity of the species kept. It's showing the ability to adjust your set up to take the needs of the fish you keep into account. If you can look at the differences between species and try to design aquariums to give them the best conditions possible, you just became an expert. Everything else is just gathering and remembering info to fill the files in your head.
At one point, the eastern sand darter was one of the most common fish found close to my old home on the island of Montreal. Into the 1950s, before my time, they were apparently all along the sandy shores in enormous numbers. Then, in those days of no environmental assessments and free market development plans, the channels of the river were changed and landfill was dumped in from mega projects, altering the shorelines. I spent many hours on the banks of that river, and I have never seen a live sand darter. The sand is buried under silt. The fish are locally extinct and endangered along the rest of their range. If you're setting up a riverbank beach tank, make sure it's more like before than after!
