Argh Georgia Aquarium!

Dwarf Puffers

Dwarf Puffers

Registered user
Dec 11, 2006
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NS, Canada
Okay, I just watched a show on discovery, can't remember what it's called, and saw the OS tanks of the georgia aquarium. I saw about 200 baby manta rays in a huge swarm. 200 fish that will grow around 10 feet wide. Then there were the Whale Sharks, and the tiny Beluga tank.

And then they were stupid enough to tell the show that the nitrogen cycle is when you put a fish in a bowl with a plant, and that the fish craps, ammonia, nitrites, nitrates get eaten by the plants and... The fish eats the plants. Bull!@#$. And now, hundreds, maybe thousands of fish will suffer that fate do to people wanting to do what they saw on TV.
 
I'm pretty sure that is a fairly accurate description of the nitrogen cycle; perhaps not a very good way to keep fish in aquaria but certainly a reasonable small-scale illustration of nature. A fish in a lake isn't being fed pellets twice a day. It's either eating plants or eating fish that eat plants (extending the chain as needed.) Similary plants aren't (or shouldn't be, at least) receiving doses of fertilizer; the nitrogen needs to be coming from somewhere. With the exception of rainfall and evaporation a lake is a fairly closed system.
 
if you do a google image search for "nitrogen cycle fish" that's pretty much exactly what you'll find. . .

plus, even if the tanks themselves seem overstocked, they have huge additional volumes of water connected to those systems being filtered or stored. like having 10 goldfish in a 55g tank, but you have a 200g sump. they have to keep the fish in close quarters so they can be easily seen, after all - that's the point of an aquarium.
 
exactly.. there are no canister filters and sumps in the wild.. plants and substrate do all the work. :)
 
Mgamer20o0 said:
whats wrong with the whale sharks? i saw the show where they got 2 more. was a little crazy watching them ship it over.
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Whats wrong with the whale sharks is that they get 30+ feet.
 
IMO, better to be kept in an aquarium so that people can view them and learn about them, than served as a special in some high-class japanese restaurant.
 
wataugachicken said:
IMO, better to be kept in an aquarium so that people can view them and learn about them, than served as a special in some high-class japanese restaurant.
Click to expand...

So, be stunted in a small space with people smacking into the glass instead of being wild and having the very small chance of being caught?
 
the acrylic is like 2 feet thick, you could pound on it with a sledgehammer and they wouldn't notice.
 
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