Boneheaded aquariums in waiting rooms

[Gary Majchrzak]

I haven't been to a doctors office in years, but I just visited one that shall remain nameless yesterday. Thanks Doc! {Son now in cast}.
Anyway, the waiting room had a large marine fish only aquarium.
One large Maroon clown at war with 3 Clarkii Clowns. Two different species of Triggerfish together. The obligatory Grouper, fins all chewed up.
Red slime coating everything, including the fake FW plastic plants. Awful lighting. Dreadful stuff. Too much to mention.
The only highlight: my 9 year old son was able to identify the fish and wonder why the tank looked so terrible.
He probably put more thought into this than the maintenance person, who is probably just milking a cash cow.
Real sad to see this nowadays with all of todays advances in the art of marine aquarium keeping.:(

[freakyreef]

Gary,
I am the same way! A few years ago we had to take a trip to MN. for medical reasons, I came across a tank that sounds pretty much like what you described. Its truely a sad sight to see, especially when you consider the level of technology incorporated into a hospital, so see something so halfassed together with low tech. parts and supplies.

[BigBird]

The sad part is that he's probably paying through the nose from some LFS guy to "maintain" that tank. I'll bet that tank gets attention like once a week. I'd freak if I knew my tank would have to go it alone for an entire week.

My Mom was in the hospital recently & they had a similarly disasterous setup going.

[kozmo02]

Gary you should have told the Doc you would take care of the tank at half the cost of his maintenance guy and make it look good so his clients can enjoy a nice tank :D

[Gary Majchrzak]

Believe me koz, the thought had crossed my mind!:)

[Gudwyn]

I was in the ER last night - 2yr old choked and we couldn't fully clear her throat.

Anyway they had fish tanks also. Looked fairly decent. Light fish load in classic fish only tanks. The hospital where my youngest was born (Overlake) has a ton of large nice fishtanks.

Kudos to whoever does the tanks here in the Bellevue, WA area. They aren't amazing reef tanks, but pretty good for waiting area type of stuff.

[argi]

I was just at an emergency room two saturdays ago and they had a reef aquarium in there. It was actually not bad except the fact that there were 5 yellow tangs in it that were not really happy with each other (but I have seen worse). Corals all looked healthy (just LPS and leathers). The tank was fairly well taken care of. I tried to take a peek at the lighting and filtration, but it was all locked up.

But I have also seen the same type of tanks you are talking about.

[dkh0331]

I'm in and out of physician offices just about every day. Those that have SW tanks - some are kept up, some - not so much. Here in the Pittsburgh area, I've seen some of the work that Steven Pro does, those are nice.

David

[Reefraff]

Next to waiting room tanks in terms of half assed are the ones in many restaurants. In a local Mexican place, they set up a 40 gal reef with some softies and a couple lps. Looked great at first, but in no time was over run with hair algae and mushrooms. What a mess! I remember thinking, "How typical, the guy taking care of this ought to be fired".

The tank stayed this way for a while, but then I noticed they were changing some things in the tank and were obviously trying to correct some of the problems. Last time I went in there the HA was totally under control, the corals looked great and the fish healthy. I was shocked and impressed. I have never seen a public reef tank outside of an aquarium turn around like that. Either they got a new service guy, or put to task the one that was doing it already.

Jeff

[Bullredchaser]

Hey reefraf,the tank was probably going through the dreaded new tank syndrome.

[3_high_low]

We have one in our waiting room. A 180g with a large blue face angel, a hippo tang, a sail fin tang, a tomato clown, two damsels , and a snowflake eel. The fish are actually in good health. It's taken care of by a fellow employee. He keeps it very sanitary looking by rotating in clean dead coral skeletons. The patients love it. I'm bored by it. What really irks me is that for each holiday the (in)appropriate ceramic figure is placed in the tank.:rolleyes: Santa, a turkey, a pumpkin, USA flag....you get the picture.

[Reefraff]

Bullred

I doubt it unless this one's new tank syndrome lasted 1 1/2 yrs. No, it was clearly a case of someone clueing in on bring a tank back.

Jeff