Hoyden

I am not sure that making enough to cover your costs necessarily equals doing it "right". For me, keeping home aquariums is hobby, pure and simple. There is no drive to make any money from it. I do it simply because I enjoy looking at my tanks and the cool animals that live in them. Once you try to make your hobby into a business, in my experience, everything changes. As someone who has made a pretty decent living at things most people pursue as a hobby (dog training, scuba instruction), at least for me, making something profitable or even just pay for itself takes some of the fun out of it. YMMV.

What size tank are you considering?

1. Humidity 2. Cleaning pumps and skimmers 3. Noisy equipment

I am a regular at my LFS (Aquarium One) - I probably stop in once a week or so and purchase what I can from them. I hope they prosper and stay in business for many years to come. When I worked in VA and it was only an extra half hour out to BRK, I was a regular there and I certainly only wish the best for Johnny and his staff. Having said that, I have to say that if the all of the lfs in the area disappeared tomorrow, it probably would not significantly impact the hobby for me. About the only things that I would really have to make more of an effort to get would be salt and frozen food. I know that sounds harsh, but it is true. The internet has changed lots of small special interest type businesses. I know since I used to manage a local independent bookstore. When the chain bookstores starting multiplying, we thought it would be the end of the world as we knew it. Small publishers would fail and large houses would only publish what they could sell to the masses without regard for quality, blah, blah, blah... Then came internet book sales and that was even worse... so now, there are pretty much no local independent bookstores, the chains are also mostly gone, and guess what, there is more access to a wider variety of books in a wider variety of formats than ever before. I do appreciate that this analogy is not perfect, but I think it is relevant. Progress can be painful. There is absolutely a convenience factor in being able to run out to your lfs to pick up fish, salt and food. For the rest of it, imo, it is just as simple to buy online. I have had lots of success purchasing livestock online, especially when I want something specific and we all know the difference in equipment prices. Maybe it is that I keep lots of water and when I am shopping for equipment, it is not likely to be something a lfs will stock anyway so my choices are: to order it through the shop, pay more, wait longer and still have to go pick it up - or buy it online, pay less and have it show up at my house sooner. This may be less of an issue when you are buying things that a lfs will generally stock. As far as depending on your lfs in an emergency, that is what friends and club members are for:) I have never seen anyone post on this board with an emergency that members didn't step up and help. I am also a little paranoid about equipment failure and have at least some kind of spare for every piece of life support equipment I use. I think that this a good general rule. As for lfs being a source of new people in the hobby, didn't almost all of us start out because we had a geeky friend who kept fish? And if we had a friend starting in the hobby, would we send them to lfs alone to get started? As for prices on the internet going up because they no longer have to compete with lfs on price, that is not likely to happen since they are still competing with each other. So while I shop at my lfs regularly and hope they prosper, I also hope their plans for the future are built on solid business plans and not on depending on the goodwill of their customer base.

If you haven't killed any equipment, you're not trying hard enough... Jackie

I have a 210 FOWLR with a large Desjardini tang, an evil rescue domino damsel and a Scamp Grouper we call Siete. I have plans for additional fish but only after Siete goes to her next home. I have a small porcupine puffer and a small Niger trigger, both in a 40 breeder, that will go to the 210 when the grouper goes to live at NADC. I like fish - the other things that live in my reef tank are just background for the fish:). My ultimate stocking plan will include the trigger, the puffer, the desjardini, an angel and a tusk fish. Eventually, I'd like to have a 10' FOWLR and then to the above fish, I'd add a rock hind or v-tail grouper. I love groupers, but I have learned not to add one until all of my other fish are in and have grown to adult size.

The hyperbolic coral reef exhibit (crochet stuff) is only up through April 24 so if you want to see it, now is the time.

I don't have any experience with this particular model, but we use a bunch of their larger models on most of the large saltwater tanks at the National Aquarium in DC and they work very well. When I tie all of my assorted tanks together in one big system, I'd be happy to slap a MRC on it.

I am glad to hear/see that he is still making it. What a tough fish!

I hope he survives. This has absolutely pushed me to cover my FOWLR - I only have a grouper, a desjardinii and a sacrificial damsel in it, but I would be heartbroken if I lost the grouper or tang. I tried to revive a bandtail puffer at the aquarium the other day with no sucess. He landed on concrete after making it through a tiny gap in the jump barrier.

I think that the key to FL fish and wildlife being concerned about these kinds of things has to do with the fact that they have an active commercial fish and coral industry - so they regulate it. There should be no real worries here in MD or VA. Jackie

If you've been feeding PE Mysis, you might try Hikari. It is smaller than PE.

You can take photos of the Nautilus, just don't use flash. It is not "free" like the rest of the museums in the city because it is not directly supported by your tax dollars like the Smithsonian museums are... and AFAIK, the Smithsonian museums and the Holocost museum are the only free shows in town. Pretty sure almost every other museum charges...

I am going to own my biases right up front. I have been volunteering with NAIB and NADC for about 6 years, putting in well over 2000 hours with them. In the last year, I have been spending one or two (or occasionally three) days every week at NADC. Having said that, the NADC is not what it has always been - there was a complete revamp that began in 2004 and is on-going. It is not the aquarium that it will/can be, but it is certainly improved. It is important to keep in mind a couple of things: 1. The National Aquarium in DC is in the same space that it has been in since 1932 so space is very limited and there is no option for expansion in the current location. Other possibilities may exist in the not-so-distant future, but for now the space is what it is. 2. After it lost all federal funding in 1982, it was taken over by a private group which did a pretty horrible job running it. In 2003, the group signed an alliance agreement with the National Aquarium in Baltimore and gradually a new staff was brought in to operate and renovate the aquarium. All of the renovations have been on a shoestring budget with the staff doing almost all of the construction. 3. The NOAA grant that funded most of the renovations put some pretty strict boundaries on what is displayed in each tank (at least as far as the saltwater tanks). If, for example, you are looking at the Buck Island Marine Reserve tank, you can be sure that all of the living things in that tank are found in the Buck Island Marine Reserve. This is way more restrictive than is typical and makes stocking some of the exhibits complicated. This is why things have to be identified so carefully before adding them to an exhibit. 4. And this may be the most important thing, we (avid marine hobbyists) are not their target market

Just curious, who told you that? I am guessing that either someone misinterpreted an article in the latest Watermarks, the National Aquarium magazine or saw the large fake one in the Buck Island exhibit. This is NADC's Atlantic live coral exhibit. It was just built this year and has some fake coral in it as well as live corals. None of the live corals are very big yet so the fake coral keeps the exhibit from looking empty. There just aren't very many large pieces of Caribbean hard corals available in captivity due to their endangered status (and the fact that most reef tank keepers like the generally more colorful and diverse Pacific corals). The aquarists at NADC are very involved in SECORE and Leah Neal, the aquarist in charge of the Buck Island exhibit recently returned from a SECORE trip to Curacao. Give it a couple of years and there will be some decent sized colonies of elkhorn there - just not yet. Jackie Cooper