Tip of the Day – 10/6/2014

Our hobby is deeply rooted in the ideas of conservation, but our daily practices should extend outside of just wildlife conservation. Instead of focusing just on preserving fish and corals, our efforts need to spill into areas like energy and plastic conservation. Our own selfish concerns have driven energy conservation, as hobbyists have adopted the energy sipping LED lighting and more energy conscious water pumps, but we are still giant consumers of plastic. Shipping fish and corals requires a lot of consumable products, like plastic bags, rubber bands, cardboard boxes, and so on. In every situation possible, these items need to be reused and repurposed. Rubber bands are really easy to reuse, as you can bag up fish or corals at your store or home over and over and over again with used rubber bands. Styrofoam is a little more difficult, but there are plenty of additional uses like floating frags upside down, using it as vibration dampener for your external water pump, or just using it for packing material. Same goes for cardboard. Instead of tearing into a box of corals, open it gently and reuse the box to ship your own stuff or just to store excess items. The possibility of repurposed items is endless, though you have to get creative sometimes.