As
most of our readers know, from Aquarium Frontiers to
Advanced Aquarist, we have essentially tried to provide
our hobby with advanced/cutting edge information and information
that is scientifically defensible - the health of the sea
creatures we maintain in captivity depends on accurate knowledge,
not the smoke from some self styled expert's opinion pipe.
This
is not a photo of a fish or coral, but of Sanjay Joshi,
Ph.D. to whom our hobby owes a great debt for the body
of knowledge he has amassed over the last decade.
Certainly, science
has not provided all the answers. If it had we would be able
to keep Crinoids alive in captivity today. And, there is a
place for anecdotal information, especially in areas where
there is little or no experimental data to help us. However,
one of the problems with anecdotal information born from an
aquarist's observations is that it often represents a small
sampling of data, too small to satisfy one of science's tenets
- repeatability.
You may have noticed
that the photo accompanying this editorial is not of a fish
or coral, but of Sanjay Joshi. For years, reef keepers have
argued about the relative merits of the bulbs we use to provide
the necessary photons (light) for our photosynthetic organisms.
Today, thanks to Sanjay, and others like Dana Riddle, Gregory
Schiemer, and Richard Harker we have an enormous, and growing
body of scientifically defensible knowledge of the means (bulbs,
reflectors, ballasts, etc.) we use to provide the illumination
to the animals that require it. In this issue you will find
part 2 of Sanjay's experimentation with 250-watt MH bulbs.
The issue of the
artificial salt that we house our animals in, its utility
when compared to natural seawater - whatever that is - along
with the matter of trace elements, is another area in reef
keeping that has stirred considerable debate for a number
of years. I'm very pleased to announce that beginning with
our September issue, Tim Hovanec, Ph.D. will present a 3 part
series on the constitution of certain artificial salt mixtures,
trace elements, and will conclude with an analysis of certain
recent studies that he plans to show are flawed. The beauty
of science is that it is not dogmatic, but self-correcting.
In Tim's own
words:
"Part
1: A Chemical Analysis of Trace Elements in Synthetic Sea
Salts and Natural Seawater.
Part
2: The Toxicity of Synthetic Sea Salts and Natural Seawater
to the Development of the White Sea Urchin (Lytichinus
pictus) larvae, and
Part
3: It is really a "Bad Beginning" or was it just Bad Science:
A Rebuttal to Shimek 2003."
