I agree - and that was one of the most rewarding things about being a part of that sci.aquaria group back then. "reef tanks" were becomming very popular, fitler technology was taking off (ozonereaktors were dropping in price, foam fractionation collumns were becomming cheap, wet/dry filter technology for home tanks was in it's infancy, and bio-balls were only just being thought of). Nearly every aquarium shop on the west coast had corals and "live rock" that could be bought, most likely harvested from Floridan or Mexican reefs. Most of us on the sci-aq group were going nuts about the destruction of it all, and while discussing the ideas of how-to breed things like corals, we were working out do-it-yourself versions of the very expensive filter kits. I made a wet-dry filter out of irrigation pipe and a spa pump, and my own foam-fractionation collumn. One of the other guys took my collumn design and used it to make his own ozone reaction collumn. Several of us were experimenting with reverse-flow under-gravel filters. My salt tank was a 55 show plexi with a blue back. I had 2 small live rocks, with annenomies, mantis shrimp (a scourge), some damsels, a few chromis chromis, a sebae annenomie and a pair of sebae clowns. The lighting was a combination of flourescent tubes - actinic, Chroma-50's, Titans, and bright-whites. The filtration moved somewhere near 20 tanks an hour (1000 gallons per hour flow). Everything was very healthy. Then... the union-chem plant down in Pt. Richmond had an accident, leaked a lot of S02 into the atmosphere. The calcium precipitated from the water in the salt tank, killing everything in short order. I lost a lot more than just that tank. But yes, we were all hoping that some of us could make a difference, breed rare fish and corals, and make the industry more eco-friendly. I only managed with a few rare-but-popular african cichlids: L. Brichardi "daphodil", and P. Elongotus "electric blue". Those two types alone kept me in free aquarium equipment and free fish food for nearly 5 years (food for all the fish except Abraxxas).
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I made a wet-dry filter out of irrigation pipe and a spa pump, and my own foam-fractionation collumn. One of the other guys took my collumn design and used it to make his own ozone reaction collumn. Several of us were experimenting with reverse-flow under-gravel filters.
My salt tank was a 55 show plexi with a blue back. I had 2 small live rocks, with annenomies, mantis shrimp (a scourge), some damsels, a few chromis chromis, a sebae annenomie and a pair of sebae clowns. The lighting was a combination of flourescent tubes - actinic, Chroma-50's, Titans, and bright-whites. The filtration moved somewhere near 20 tanks an hour (1000 gallons per hour flow). Everything was very healthy.
Then... the union-chem plant down in Pt. Richmond had an accident, leaked a lot of S02 into the atmosphere. The calcium precipitated from the water in the salt tank, killing everything in short order. I lost a lot more than just that tank.
But yes, we were all hoping that some of us could make a difference, breed rare fish and corals, and make the industry more eco-friendly.
I only managed with a few rare-but-popular african cichlids: L. Brichardi "daphodil", and P. Elongotus "electric blue". Those two types alone kept me in free aquarium equipment and free fish food for nearly 5 years (food for all the fish except Abraxxas).