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Re: Fresah water reefs
I'm surprised at the number of folks that are talking about the various
aspects of salt water that make "live substrates" more viable in salt water,
without mentioning the fact that there are thousands of marine species whose
zygote (okay, bio-educated folks- is this the right term?) stage are
unicellular or diatomic itty-bitty critters. These things come into the tank
when you introduce the live rock, then grow up to become tube worms and the
like. I have a friend in Ft. Lauderdale who maintained his SW tank by
collecting water from the ocean for water changes. Constantly was he finding
new crustaceans and even one very small fish that he knew for sure there was
no way he had introduced them until I reminded him of this simple fact.
Anyone who feeds their fish wild-caught foods, as I do on rare occasion, will
eventually start seeing things in the gravel, or sticking to the glass, that
were not intentionally introduced. Go down to any stream, set up a fine-mesh
sieve-net, and start turning over rocks about eight feet upstream. All that
stuff lives in fresh water too. Okay, not the same "Stuff" as SW, but lots
of things.
Bob Dixon
Cichlid Trader List Administrator
http://cichlidtrader.listbot.com