Bi-Weekly Discussion of the Week:What makes some critters more difficult than others!

[Geoff]

So what makes certain critters more difficult to keep than others? Lets talk both fish and inverts.

G~

[MiddletonMark]

Difficult diet.
Obligate feeders on corals, sponges, other nearly impossible things to culture or provide for our critters. Examples: many butterflies, nudibranches, even something like cleaner wrasses.

Difficult behaviors ... either fighting or jumping like mad. Can be somewhat controlled, but yet often problematic to say the least.

I can go on, but figured I'd kick it off with those easy ones...

[512148048]

heavy meatles and tollerance to it inverts have a very low tollerance to copper and most everything to lead or Hg

[Geoff]

lets talk about everyones favorite difficult fish to keep, the mandarin.

why are these difficult to keep for extended periods of time?

G~

[MiddletonMark]

That's a `difficult diet' one. Nearly all only eat live food ... which needs a mature tank, thriving micro-life, no other competition ... and for this to remain a steady state [no disruptions, temporary lack of food, etc].

[Geoff]

is the diet itself difficult or is the way we design our systems that make it difficult to keep them?

where do mandarins live?

G~

[Geoff]

a couple of good articles on them.

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/mandarins.htm

http://translate.google.com/translat...8%26oe%3DUTF-8

G~

[biomekanic]

size - how often do you hear about or run into someone who wants to keep a nurse shark?

[Geoff]

it does not help that LFS's are able to get juveniles of just about anything out there. it is hard to think that an 18" shark will get over 14' when adult!

G~

[Geoff]

is the feeding problem for a lot of the critters we would like to keep a tank size problem or is it an availability problem?

G~

[Geoff]

what if we were able to buy sponges as food? would that make you want to keep more angels?

with the mandarine, the bigger the tank the more rockwork the greater the pod population. what if you setup a tank that is designed for pods?

i think we stock our tanks all wrong. we are trying to keep these SW like we they were FW. we need to decide what we want to keep then design the system around that.

G~

[Graham]

Originally posted by Geoff
So what makes certain critters more difficult to keep than others?

Ignorance.

[Geoff]

Originally posted by Graham
Ignorance.

on whose part? science in general or the hobbiest who is thinking about getting it before researching the requirements!

G~

[Graham]

Both.

But before I answer the rest of your question, what are we considering "successful keeping" in regards to "difficult to keep" animals? If Joe A keeps his mandarin alive for two weeks and Joe B keeps his mandarin alive for a year, which (if either) are "successful" in an absolute sense? Is success relative? Is difficulty relative? I have had my mandarin for close to 3 years. Should I consider her a "difficult" specimen? Does that make me somehow more skilled or knowledgeable than you? (so to speak)


As for who's ignorance, that's not easy to answer, either.
IME, hobbyist ignorance is far too common and is often not entirely their fault (listening to the wrong folks), but it spreads and propagates and ties in quite nicely with the recent trend in "dispelling" hobby-related myths. It's a trend I'd like to see continue...still, can you blame a hobbyist for being ignorant with the best intentions at their disposal? OK, getting too philosophical...

"Difficulty" is more often than not tied into hobbyist knowledge and experience with said "difficult" species and is relative IMO - save certain beasts such as Dendros (absolutely difficult) or Goniopora...in which case the few folks who are "successful" don't really know why they are successful...

[Graham]

Oh yeah, "scientific ignorance" is really the vehicle that drives science itself, isn't it? Without ignorance in the scientific community, there'd be no quest for knowledge. Once confronted, ignorance in science is either replaced with a valid or invalid hypothesis...(or a new career ) but data nonetheless. Not so with the hobby. Data is often in terms of grow/live or die.

This is much more dangerous than ignorance in science the way I'm thinking. A definite number of hobbyists don't have that "drive" to become "learned" - they just give up or keep killing things, incorrectly diagnose their reason(s) for failure, or move on to another distraction....(well, OK, I'm sure there are such scientists)

Of course there is always the possibility that science hasn't yet proven that sleep gives you cancer - in which case, scientific ignorance would be bad.