This earth day we won’t barage you with any more gloomy stories or dire predictions for our planet’s or ocean’s future but we will instead simply invite you to be introspective about the state of our greater environment. We all have an ecological footprint which affects our environment and as aquarists we place additional pressures on the ocean environment for the sake of our hobby. There are plenty of obvious things we can do to make our tanks eco-friendly and StonyReef has a good write up detailing the myriad ways we can all reduce our aquarium’s energy footprint. In addition to resources and energy that go in to making the physical aquarium environment, we’d like to urge all of our readers to reflect on their livestock purchasing habits and how they affect the Ocean and the Earth. If you are an SPS fan do you buy locally made frags which have not been shipped halfway around the world or do you buy wild pieces? If you are buying wild do you tend to purchase maricultured colonies which provide sustainable source of full time income for island nations or do you opt for the wild harvested pieces which still provide income but perhaps have more impact on the reef environment? If you are an LPS lover are you targeting rapidly growing species such as Acans and Faviids which are easily propagated or are the slow growing, solitary corals more your thing? The corals you buy and how you aquire them has a great impact on the local and far away environment. The same principles apply to purchasing inverts, rock and fish. This Earth Day (Ocean Day) we hope you will all take a moment to look at your tank and think about all that was involved with getting the livestock to it’s final destination. We all care a great deal for our planet and our oceans and by applying just a little bit of critical decision making to our livestocking habits, we can all speak with our actions and our wallets. Photo from ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.
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