上周我的女儿凯瑟琳（Catherine）在春假时回家，我有一天把她带出去购物，我很高兴地报告说，有一些比这种爱好：为一个十几岁的女孩购物的东西。当我们四处开车时，一部分交易是我们将在沿途的几家当地商店停下来。
Plus she actually enjoys going in to Aquaworld and Wet Pets as their staffs always make a big deal when she goes in with me as she has been visiting them with me since she was small. While there, I not only look over the livestock but I always seem to get into lively discussions about the hobby with the staff and the customers and that is always fun. After leaving the second shop she said something interesting to me. She said “You must really love the hobby”.
I asked why she said this. Her response was “I see you talk to friends and family all the. She then asked “what is it about the hobby that makes you love it”. After thinking about this time about a lot of things, but only when you talk about this do you really show passion”. I knew she was right and it got me to thinking about what it is about the hobby that makes me love it. It also made me curious as to what makes my fellow hobbyists love it as well?
我喜欢很多东西,喜欢和我的狗,高尔夫球Steelers, but what is it that makes me, and us, love this hobby so much. It has to be more than just the colorful fish and corals, as we could just watch that on tv. So the first thing that came to mind is that because of this hobby I now have many friends that I have had for over 20 years, that I would not have were it not for this hobby.
我去过他们的家，他们去我的家，我们一起去了公路旅行，一起嘲笑会议，分享了很多餐和成人饮料。但不仅如此，我们还分享了彼此的成功和失败，并互相学习。当某件事工作并享受彼此的胜利时，我们并没有彼此保持秘密。
我希望人们现在进入爱好可以建立这些相同的友谊，但它不会与大多数人至少从一开始至少取得成功，这对我和我的大多数朋友而言并非如此。我认为我们遭受的许多失败有助于形成了持续了很长时间的纽带。
除了我们共享许多相同的经验，这总是有助于建立友谊之外，这种爱好也受到祝福，因为许多帮助建立它的人始终易于访问。像马丁·莫（Martin Moe），汤姆·弗雷克斯（Tom Frakes），特里·西格尔（Terry Siegel），查理·维伦（Charlie Veron），赫尔穆特·德贝利乌斯（Helmut Debelius），已故的彼得·威尔肯斯（Peter Wilkens）和无与伦比的阿尔夫·尼尔森有兴趣分享他们的想法并听到所有人的意见。
即使我们不是完美的，但由于通过反复试验和错误缓慢地取得了成功，让这些伟大的人与我们交谈帮助我爱上了这种爱好。我记得几个晚上与ALF，Svein Fossa和其他爱好者之类的人喝酒和笑，并承认我们实际上知道了很多以及学习曲线的陡峭程度。当我去Macna或Reefapalooza时，我仍然每天晚上都会看到这种情况，所以我希望这能成为我们爱这种爱好的原因之一。
Fortunately today I still see the gurus in the hobby willing to talk with everyone. Whether it’s Sanjay explaining his latest work in lighting or technology or Julian being asked for the 1000th time “what is this”? They still seem just as excited about the hobby as when we all had hair.
也许是因为尽管他们已经做了很长时间，但他们仍然是业余爱好者，因此仍然喜欢分享对业余爱好的热情，即使对某些人来说，现在也是他们一生的工作。因此，您怎么可能不喜欢每个人仍然与每个人平等的爱好，尽管业余爱好使每个人仍然与其他所有人交谈，但没有很多Prima Donnas。
Everyone being equal with each other is one aspect of this hobby that makes it different from most and also may add to our love of it as well. I say that, as unlike most hobbies where once you are successful you pretty much know it, in this hobby anyone can have a tank totally crash overnight, or get electrocuted or stung, and as a result we all know that we can be humbled at any time. So maybe this constant fear and knowledge that no one is immune adds to the camaraderie that is one of the endearing aspects of the hobby.
还有其他独特之处在于，如果发生这种情况，我们的同伴爱好者将不仅可以通过给我们的支持和见解来帮助我们重新分组，而且经常提供碎片和替代品，以帮助我们重返游戏。再次，您怎么能不喜欢这样做的爱好？
这种爱好的独特性和不断变化的方面也可能也是我们许多人喜欢它的原因之一。从一开始就一直参与其中，回头看看真正发生了多少变化，令人敬畏。尽管大多数变化都是积极的，但即使更改没有给他们带来任何优势，他们总是教会我们一些帮助我们走上的东西。其中一些变化包括用尽可能多的光炸毁我们的坦克，而现在几乎没有电流到现在，我们可以使用较少的光线和明显的电流并获得更好的效果。
Early tanks had incredible levels of nitrate and phosphate in them, which we then changed to tanks devoid of virtually any nutrients or food for the corals to now where we understand that corals need both nutrients and food for their long term success. Most people love to learn new things and with how much there is to learn about this hobby this aspect of it keeps it from becoming stale for a lot of us.
除了改变外，始终保持这种爱好新鲜并增加了我们对它的热爱，这使它变得独一无二，这使它令人兴奋的是新生物不断进入爱好，因此我们需要学习必要的适当的畜牧业与他们成功。因此，总是有新的东西要学习。
几乎为每个人或新的生物都有一个海洋生物，为那些认为自己拥有一切的人提供了海洋生物。过去十年来，每种颜色的新珊瑚一直在海浪中涌现，因此，当您认为一切都看到了所有您必须进来的新珊瑚。wrass骨，布莱恩斯或anthias频繁到达。
但这仅仅是开始,如果你不have room for a big tank you can now get beautiful small fish and small corals for a nano tank. If you don’t want a reef tank you can have tank bred seahorses, or cuttlefish that actually eat, or even a mantis shrimp. The level of knowledge that has been acquired in the last few years now allows us to keep almost everything alive for what would be its natural life span or longer in many instances.
这种对业余爱好的热爱还产生了一群业余爱好者，他们不再对保持鱼类和珊瑚的活力感到满意，而是致力于寻找繁殖和养育我们想要保留的许多动物的秘密。结果，现在大多数小丑鱼都在商业上繁殖，许多山羊，搅拌器，巴斯莱特人和其他我们保存在水箱中的小鱼也是如此。
This breeding success is also occurring more and more in commercial enterprises so that hopefully within the next few years, at least some of the fish that we now consider rare, endangered or that some legislative bodies want to stop us from harvesting will be raised within the hobby itself. I want to congratulate all of you that are working to improve our knowledge in breeding and raising all of these marine animals because as we all know it is for the most part a labor of love more than anything else.
Lastly, I think that one of the additional reasons that we love this hobby is that it is just fun to be able to tell and show people that we have live corals, like on a reef, in our homes. I know that when many people who aren’t in the hobby see our tanks their first response is “Wow you have Nemo and Dory in your tank”.
虽然这对我们许多人来说是一种偏心，但他们完全想念它们被珊瑚包围，我们许多人已经从雅克·库斯托（Jacques Cousteau）本人感到骄傲的碎片中成长出来，但它仍然使我们感到满意，因为我们知道自己做了什么。我个人知道我也喜欢这种爱好，因为它使我能够摆脱工作压力和放松。我可以只坐在水箱前享受我所做的一切，可以放松一下。
当我在坦克上工作时，我什至放松一下，无论是在换水还是碎裂珊瑚或只是清洁撇渣器，当我这样做时，我几乎都会忘记我一生中发生的其他一切。我不知道对您来说是否相同，但我必须认为这对我们大多数人来说都很放松。
现在，这种爱好已经存在了30多年，在那段时间内，它的受欢迎程度已大大增长。从我们开始这样做到今天，我永远都不会相信它会变得如此之多，也不会使我们的理解也发展到目前的水平。这种爱好不仅仅是在玻璃盒中拥有各种各样的鱼类和棍棒，还可以证明它所显示的人们的热情水平。
As I wrote recently it is a hobby that can be addicting in some ways, but it is also a hobby that people truly love being in. And as Neil Young wrote “Yes only love can break your heart”. And sadly many of us have had our heart broken in it, but fortunately most of us have gotten back on the horse and tried again.
我想我知道是什么让我喜欢这种爱好，但是我也很乐意听到您为什么喜欢它？是的，您还可以告诉我们您的心脏也被伤了，除了没有扁虫在吃Acro故事外吗？
