darren636 said:
i think it is fair to say that a high tech set up is not a natural environment at all. The plants behave quite differently compared to their uncultivated cousins. As for the stress on fish aspect.... The more i think about it in recent months , the more i want to run a biotope...
Really, I don't think this is fair at all. I mean, it's not even close to being fair for the following reasons;
1. There is nothing natural about keeping fish in a glass box, whether CO2 or non-CO2, whether biotope or cheesey pirate's sunken treasure chest. As far as I can tell, there are no glass boxes in nature.
There is nothing natural about lighting that glass box with artificial lights ot using a filter or pump or plastic tubes.
None of these contraptions appear in natural habitats, so people are under a self induced hypnosis if they convince themselves that somehow, if they do certain things to the tank to approximate a natural environment, then they would have fulfillment in having a natural environment. This can never happen. Furthermore, the tank is a closed system which builds pollution unnaturally and which has to be artificially addressed. No natural system has synthetic flake food being dumped into it on a regular basis. Every aspect of every tank is at best a facsimile. Of course, natural process occur in a glass box, but that doesn't make the glass box system itself natural.
2. In nature, fish do not die of heart disease or high cholesterol. They do not have high incidences of Ich, or velvet, or Hole in the Head, or a myriad of other diseases that occur strictly because they are confined like prisoners in a glass box. Instead, in natural systems all fish die from predation when they weaken or become slow. This is a harsh reality that we try to avoid in the management of a synthetic glass box. This also is not natural.
3. LFS stay in business primarily because of ineptitude and incompetence of hobbyists who kill their fish for the factors listed above. On a statistical basis, the number of fish that die due to CO2 toxicity compared to the number of fish that die due to other forms of incompetence is truly miniscule.
Fairness? If you want to be fair, stop buying fish and stop the depletion of our worlds aquatic habitats of their native fauna.
Furthermore, on the issue of CO2, is there a law that say you must have fish in a CO2 injected tank? I personally don't care whether or not I have fish in my tank, because I am mostly focused on growing plants. The glass box is only called a fish tank because the first galss boxes ever built were used to house fish. That does not compel you to put fish in it.
If one is going to have a synthetic glass box and keep both fish and plants in it, then one should learn and understand the pitfalls and risks so that they can be avoided or minimized. If you know that CO2 cylinders have a risk of dumping CO2 when the quantity gets low then simply change the cylinder prior to it's getting low or invest in a more robust regulator. All of these risks can be avoided/minimized. Use less light so that the system demands less CO2. Is driving a car dangerous? Yes. Will you avoid driving cars because they are dangerous? No, you wear a seatbelt, become a more skilled driver and be aware of the dangers in order to avoid them. The same goes for CO2.
Cheers,
