Recently while perusing the web, I came across an interesting post by Paul B regarding his reef tank now being 44 years old. And while I have been doing this a long time none of the tanks I have ever had have gotten close to being set up for this length of time. After reading the many posts and comments about this great tank it got me thinking about longevity in this hobby.
I know today where most things are thrown out as soon as a part breaks rather than being repaired, longevity is kind of a forgotten concept. And actually when you think about it there are actually a lot of different aspects of longevity that can be considered in this hobby.
The first aspect and possibly what may be the most important in terms of longevity is longevity in the hobby. That is, how long has someone been maintaining tanks, reef, saltwater or even freshwater. While we may pooh pooh those who don’t share our love for reefs, staying in any aspect of this hobby for a prolonged period of time does take a certain type of person.
As we all know it can be time consuming, expensive and frustrating. In addition, very rarely are the costs, smells, and messes enjoyed by both members in a relationship, which can be strained as a result. In addition life can often get in the way of enjoying the hobby over the long term. Moving for career or family as well as just travel for work can make it difficult to stay focused on the hobby over the long term as it neither easy to move a tank from place to place nor is it easy to keep one going when you are on the road all the time.
All of these factors plus many more that I am undoubtedly forgetting all contribute to why so few of stay in the hobby for even close to the 44 years of Paul B. I have known a lot of individuals for over 25 years including Julian, Sanjay, Charles, Scott, Richard, Tony and Eric and we have discussed on numerous occasions how many of the people we have known over the years have dropped out of the hobby over time. The other thing that amazes us is how quickly the time in the hobby has gone by.
Reading Paul’s posts another aspect of longevity was evident: not only has he had a reef tank for 44 years, but the same tank itself has been set up as a reef for that long. To me having a single tank set up as a reef for 44 years is almost unfathomable, no pun intended. The longest tank that I have ever had set up without breaking it down or moving to a larger tank, was my 580-gallon tank and that was set up for the relatively short time of slightly over 11 years and which to this day I still regret breaking down.
考虑一下我已经或听说过的所有坦克，泄漏或破裂了，我惊讶于经受住了礁石坦克时间测试的水箱的质量，持续了这么长时间。我听说过的唯一坦克甚至是那段时间的时间，是特里·西格尔（Terry Siegel）的坦克（Terry Siegel）的坦克，如果我没记错的话，它几乎是闻所未闻的30多年的时间。正如我上面提到的那样，能够将坦克持续很长时间，而不会妨碍生命或让坦克失去结构完整性是惊人的。
I’m curious as to how many of us in the hobby could do this today considering how frequently most of us move. I myself have lived in 4 houses over the past 30 years and most of the people I know in the hobby have moved with similar frequency. Therefore I am pretty certain that Paul’s record, when he decides to get it into the Guiness Book of records will be difficult to surpass.
Fortunately there are other aspects to longevity that we should all look to match or surpass. The first of these is maximizing the longevity of the corals in our tanks. As I travel about and see lots of tanks it has become apparent that very few hobbyists are maintaining colonies of corals for very long periods of time. With the demand for corals, especially “rare” or named ones being so high most corals are fragged as soon as a sellable branch occurs.
I am curious as to how many of these corals will still be around, ten, fifteen or twenty years from now. I say that as looking back on pictures of tanks I have from just five and ten years ago very few of the corals that were being kept then are still in these tanks. Granted a lot of the corals we see today are better colored or “rarer” but I wonder what happened to these corals, especially since to me a large colony of even a brown or green coral is far more interesting than a ¾” frag of a named coral that I have often seen in the place where old unnamed colony rested.
In this regard I would enjoy hearing from people who have colonies of corals over 10 years of age or greater. I would also love to see pictures of these corals from the past to the present. I am curious as it would be interesting to see if the “advanced” techniques we are employing today compared with those of ten or more years ago has morphed the corals in terms of coloration or structure.
除了看到殖民地的变化外，我知道还有20多年的原始殖民地中有第四，第五和更大的“命名”珊瑚，我已经看到了Morph。其中之一是著名的Stuber Acroporawhich is quite possibly the firstAcroporato be successfully cultivated and propagated. When I first saw this coral and received a frag it was just brown and I mean a completely brown Acropora.
Now when I see it online it only has a touch of brown while the rest is blue or green depending on who’s selling it. So I’m curious as to when this change in color took place and more interesting to me is what caused it to change color. Since this completely brown coral has morphed in coloration over time I would love to see if this same thing has occurred with large colonies of corals over time.
就我个人而言，我现在在水箱中拥有的最古老的珊瑚是三个11岁的珊瑚，其中包括粉红色的pocillopora绿桌和绿松石雄鹿。我会给物种，但除了Pocilloporaall of these corals have morphed a great deal over the years. In addition I also still have a small colony of the “Paletta pink tip”, but as has occurred with most of the corals I have kept of the long-term, at times they have died back and then with proper TLC I was able to bring them back and grow them back into nice sized colonies.
As a result of these die backs each time they came back the colony looked different than it did before it died back. It would be interesting to see if this also occurred in the colonies others have kept over a long period of time.
最后一个居民of our reef tanks whose longevity would be interesting to assess is that of the fish. In the summer 1986 issue of SeaScope, the ages of a large number of fish at the Nancy Aquarium in France were documented. At the time of this publication seeing the age of some of these fish was astounding, especially when considering at that time most hobbyists were still having difficulty keeping fish alive for any extended period of time.
It would be interesting to see if any of these fish were still alive as well as to see what the records were for the age of various fish since they kept such meticulous records. [Ed. Note. A sixbar angelfish at the Nancy Aquarium isover forty years old]。看到这些鱼的年龄与我们今天在水箱中保持的某些鱼的年龄相比，这些鱼的年龄如何。
我知道，除非是罕见或“喜欢”的鱼，否则我们中的许多人可能会认为我们的坦克中的一些鱼在周围是理所当然的。至少我知道这是我的情况，因为我知道我很长一段时间以来一直保留的唯一一条鱼是我的红海富豪天使，而我的黄色唐人是14岁的黄色天使，而我的海洋贝塔（Marine Betta）则是我的孩子们的名字。Buck” 16岁。此外，很高兴知道我们的鱼的年龄与他们的自然生活期望是什么。
虽然不幸的是，我们确实失去了鱼类和珊瑚以及不时失去坦克，但我们长期以来保持海洋动物的能力现在处于前所未有的水平，只能继续改善。现在，我知道我可以在十多年内保持困难的灵感，也许我可以证明自己得到一个昂贵的人并认为这是合理的？我可以保持这么长时间，以便在我看来，每年只花费50至60美元。至少这就是我要告诉看我财务的人。
Since keeping records of the longevity of all of the things I’ve mentioned has not been done for a long time as far as I know I would love to hear from all of you if you have kept anything for a long time? The only way we are going to know how good we have gotten is to know how long each of us have kept things and if we are good it might justify the price we pay for some of our charges.
