SuburbanReef.com Blog

Anyone who has turned on a TV, radio or looked at their calendar this week realized that we had earth day. As an aquarium hobbyist and a nature fanatic I give a great deal of thought to how we can further improve the hobby to better protect our earth. To most of you the answers are obvious, but I will list some ways that we can not only improve our hobby but minimize the impact our hobby has on the environment:

Supporting Suppliers of Captive Bred aquatic life. The less aquatic life that we can harvest from our oceans the better. For the most part, marine aquatic life for the aquarium hobby is harvested from the ocean but the industry is getting more sophisticated and better at captive breeding aquatic life. For information about Captive Breeding, some information can be found through Sustainable Aquatics.
Additionally, information can be found through ORA (Oceans, Reefs and Aquariums)

Challenging manufacturers to providing ecologicaly friendly and energy efficient aquatic equipment. Through compact flourescent and T5 lighting, reef aquariums require less energy than those of metal halides. LED reef lighting however, uses even less energy, produces less heat and are fully capable of lighting a reef aquarium. The downside currently is cost, until the cost of these lights go down significantly hobbyists will continue to use the older standards. We expect to be offering these lights soon on suburbanreef.com when they are more affordable for the hobbyist.