Sustainability
 

I was just wanting to get some various perspectives of what sustainability means to the aquarium hobby and ways that it could become more sustainable. This does no have to be limited to fish collection, breeding, and such, but it can also include maintenance, plants, equipment, or anything really.

I find it interesting that many aquarium hobbyists do not try to make the hobby more sustainable. Everything that we do has some impact on the wild populations of the species that we love and house in our aquariums along with undiscovered species that, if they do not go extinct, could one day have a profound impact in the hobby.

Thanks for any ideas.

Side line on why some aquarists do not trying to make it more sustainable:
with not much choice of anything interesting in LFS or by mail-order (not US), one stuck with species, that require specific conditions, and have to provide these conditions.

Another option is to keep the tank, and select inhabitants, that do not disturb self-sufficiency (almost). Some even go so far, that do that for a deep sand bed.

Choices, choices... Or absence of them ;)

I think the hobby as a whole is trying to become more sustainable through their use of foaming fractionators (protein skimmers) and refugiums (natural filtration). The new popularity of stream based pumps that take a few watts to push a lot of water reduce electrical load and if the new LED lights ever come down in price that will again reduce electrical load and remove many harmful chemicals in many of the bulbs we use. The LED manufacturing process can, arguably, be called into question, but thats beside the point.

I think dendro hit it on the nose to an extent that we must maintain specific conditions for our inhabitants which generally requires WC and supplements etc etc. To keep trace elements stable. It could be argued that we could get away from some of these habits, but someone would have to identify the trace elements needed and used by every organism and they would have to be dosed appropriately. That of course adds a lot of workload on the owner so a WC with salt containing most of these elements is much easier.

I am getting slightly side tracked, but am interested what type of ideas you had in mind. I try to be eco-minded so if you have great ideas they could be discussed here.