True Colors

Yellow-dyed sea anemones at an importer’s facility in California – none of these actinians has any chance of survival..….

We must discourage the trade in dyed cnidarians in the reef aquarium hobby

Essay by Daniel Knop

There is no doubt that colors fascinate us humans. Everywhere in life we encounter colorful things – fashion, decor, cars. And if we think something is a bit boring then we describe it as “colorless” or “dull”. When it comes to nature we again enthuse over anything that involves bold color contrasts – we love fiery-red sunsets, likewise brightly colored flowers in lush green meadows.

No wonder that for many people the colorfulness of the coral reef is one of its most fascinating aspects. And as a result colors are often seen as pivotal in the coral-reef aquarium.

I still remember clearly the 1980s, when practically only soft corals were grown in the aquarium; many aquarists were annoyed at the uniform brown of these corals, all of which were a strong dark brown in color by virtue of their symbiotic algae (and the dangerously high nutrient concentration), and the only slight color contrast came from any corals that perhaps produced a lighter red-brown or, in the case of a fully-opened specimen of Sarcophyton, for example, verged on golden yellow. The ultimate was often a wickedly-green fluorescent Briareum species, and its colors were accentuated even further with blue fluorescent tubes.

All the stages of degeneration can be seen in these three dyed Sinularia – this will be followed by shriveling and tissue breakdown.

But despite all the criticism of the “uniform brown”, this was already a major step forward compared to what went on 10–15 years previously, at the beginning of the coral reef hobby.

Only a few months ago, during a clear-out, I came across a large flat Acropora skeleton the size of a soup plate, vibrant fire-red in color. It had been entrusted to me around 20 years ago – coated with brown Sinularia dura tissue – by a lady aquarist, now deceased, with the request that I would treat it with respect as it was one of the last remnants of attempts at the beginning of the 1970s to add a bit more color to the marine aquarium using the skeletons of dead stony corals dyed in bright shades.

That was in some ways the infancy of the coral reef hobby; by then there were occasional soft corals in our aquaria, but in those days not even the most intrepid aquarist ever once imagined that one day it would be possible to grow splendidly-colored stony corals in the aquarium. The limit of ambition was to dress up in Easter-egg colors – bright red, blue, and green –the stony-coral skeletons that which during the 1960s had invariably been bleached in soda lye in order to rid them of algae and other organic substances before displaying them as nicely “germ-free” and gleaming white.

Corals in every color of the rainbow – nothing unusual in Asian aquaria.

We may smile or grimace at that today, as in the interim the marine aquarium hobby in Central Europe and North America has developed a far more natural relationship with the coral reef.

Nowadays we let corals grow into regular miniature reefs in our glass boxes and often even maintain coral species that have been in the reef aquarium hobby for a decade and a half, propagated, and passed on from one aquarist to another.

It is true that for many people colors are still very much to the forefront, but on the one hand this is criticized vigorously by numerous other aquarists (which is to say, other viewpoints do exist), while on the other hand we achieve colorful aquaria not by the use of Easter-egg paints but with live corals. And that in turn means that we have to make the effort to understand their environmental and other requirements, and to try and provide them with suitable aquarium conditions.

This is a whole different ball-game to the Easter-egg colors of the past – in other words the reduced concern with aesthetics and the increased interest in observing behavior has certainly been very good for the coral-reef hobby. And perhaps the improvement will continue for some time yet – the hobby is still young, constantly progressing and evolving further.

Dye-happy Asian Cnidarian Sellers

But the subject of aquarium maintenance of corals is interpreted quite differently in some tropical countries in Asia, precisely where these corals occur naturally. In many places – whether in the Philippines, Indonesia, or Singapore – one can see marine aquaria with totally inadequate equipment that nevertheless contain a wide variety of stony corals, which generally survive for just a few months – often only weeks.

Nobody is at all bothered if the poisonous-green fluorescent polyp tissue of the Catalaphyllia degenerates and exposes the chalky-white skeleton – they don’t have to put up with this for long, as once a month the aquarium maintenance man arrives and supplies the tank with fresh corals. If visitors are expected on a Sunday then he may even be called in a few days earlier, as everything needs to look nice and colorful and healthy. And perhaps he would be so kind as to bring a few of those splendid red ones that go so well with the sofa cushions.

Red-dyed Sinularia in an Indonesian reef aquarium – should living creatures be “jazzed up” for ornamental purposes?

This “cut-flower” form of the coral-reef hobby, which reduces animals to the status of disposable items, may appear completely incomprehensible to us coral breeders in the modern coral-reef aquarium hobby. It is, of course, also quite reprehensible, a catastrophe for the reputation of the reef-aquarium hobby, and I am very glad that in Manila a small group of leading coral-reef aquarists are very busy raising the awareness of the rest to the modern aquarium maintenance of corals, making it clear to them that corals can be propagated instead of treated as consumables.

The Cultural & Geographic Divide

But even so this completely intolerable aquarium-hobby practice is understandable to some degree if we consider the differences between countries far from the tropics, with a highly-developed industrial culture, and the tropical countries with coral reefs. We can obtain the equipment required for a simple reef aquarium for a fairly modest sum, while a small fragment of a sought-after coral species can cost a small fortune. No wonder: every last bit of marine life has to be transported halfway around the world, while aquarium equipment is produced on our doorstep.

It is quite the opposite in tropical countries: the reefs are readily accessible to everyone, in some cases literally just outside the door, so livestock for the aquarium is available practically free of charge. But the equipment required to keep corals alive, and perhaps even propagate them, has to be imported from abroad at great expense and transported halfway round the world in the process. And that is why they prefer to change their corals every month instead of buying equipment.

Gaudily dyed sea anemones at an export station in Indonesia – the “Easter Bunny” has been very busy here.

One might bitingly term this reef-harming aquarium practice “Third World aquarium hobby”, analogous to the equally scathing term “1960s aquarium hobby” applied to the bleaching of coral skeletons in soda lye and the wide-spread treatment of the aquarium water with copper. Both feasible, but both quite simply unacceptable.

However, this “tropical” form of the hobby is allied to the practice of treating live corals with Easter egg colors, just as European aquarists did in the early 1970s with coral skeletons. The live corals perish as a result, as the mouse bites off no thread, but that doesn’t matter, after all they aren’t expensive, you can always buy new ones. I have been familiar with this practice in Asia for two decades, have always successfully managed to suppress the urge to deliver a lecture when visiting coral export stations, but been very glad that hardly anyone in the industrialized lands of the west has conceived the idea of offering a gaudily-colored, dyed coral or sea anemone for sale. Until recently, when I first came across sales tanks containing colorful dyed stony corals in the German aquarium trade. Friendly retailers have told me that they will die in the aquarium but then people will have to buy new ones. Never did the ring of the cash register sound sweeter.

Just Say No

In the past such dyed cnidarians have not made their way into North America or Central European trade in large numbers, or at most accidentally, without being ordered. Hopefully that will remain the case.

I find it difficult to imagine that dedicated marine aquarists – aquarists who are involved in a hobby that has been working hard for a long time to propagate corals – would actually take pleasure in watching Easter-egg stony corals and sea anemones die. This murderous practice is far too despicable, and too great is the desire of marine aquarists to observe a living biotope in their glass boxes at home. The long-term evolution of such a biotope is the real fascination of the coral-reef aquarium.

Anyone who wants something to match the sofa cushions is advised to keep plastic corals – easy to keep, robust, and available in any color.

If deliberately offering such irreversibly damaged “cut-flower corals,” perhaps surrounded by brightly-colored plastic corals, does actually develop into a trend in the trade, then that could prove a fatal development for the coral-reef aquarium hobby, as critics would be hard put to find another such ready and effective lever as this deliberate “jazzing up” of marine life for ornamental purposes.

Maintaining a coral-reef aquarium should not be motivated by the desire for a room ornament, but purely by the wish to enjoy and observe marine wildlife at home, to appreciate events and interactions in the aquarium. And it should involve what I would term “respect for life.” In fact I would far prefer to use the term “humility,” but humility seems out of mode in our modern world today....
 

Daniel Knop is the founding editor of KORALLE, the German parent magazine of CORAL.