Since this is my last piece for the year I thought rather than reflecting back on the past year, I would answer one of the questions I get asked the most: What do you see as the future of the hobby? Well as Timbuk3 sang: “The Future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades”. And while I admit that there are some potential things that could slow the growth and progress of the hobby, for the most part what we have learned and where this hobby is going is amazing considering where it has come from.
Considering that just a couple of decades ago there were only acouple of hundred of usdoing this and then we were happy just to keep something alive to now where there are well over a million hobbyists worldwide and we not only can keep just about anything alive but also get it to grow and often times reproduce, things look pretty rosy.
So considering the huge strides we have made, especially in the last decade, I really only see incremental improvements in things individually, but when added together I think these small leaps will add even more the success of the hobby. The first step I see in the near future is an improvement in the monitoring of our tanks. And rather it just being a number popping up on a screen I see it being interactive monitoring.
So instead of just being able to see the temperature or salinity or whatever parameter we want on a small monitor, or our phone or computer I see us being able to not only check on a lot more parameters in real time, but I also see us being able to adjust things when we are away from our tanks. Considering how much traveling many of us do as well as how long our hours of work away from home are, being able to monitor and adjust things as needed, even if it is just little tweaks, will go a long way in adding to our success.
Personally I think the time is past due that our monitoring systems should not only be able to alert us when something is amiss, such a tank is overheating or the salinity is dropping due to a top-off system malfunction and we can then use an app on our phones to shut of the lights or freshwater pump and save the tank.
I still hear horror stories about people losing their tanks for these reasons so I expect this to happen fairly soon to a much greater degree than occurs now. By the same token I also expect the monitoring we get to not only get more precise, but to also be able to monitor more parameters. I know that MindStream is working on producing just such monitoring for the hobby, so hopefully if they are successful this type of monitoring with eventual ability for interaction will become the norm for the hobby at a reasonable price.
Once this monitoring does become widely available, I look for the next incremental change to be a better understanding of water chemistry. While our understanding of water chemistry is leaps and bounds greater than it was even 10 years ago, it still is rather rudimentary in terms of our understanding how all of the different cycles that occur within our tanks interact and effect one another as well as how fast or slow different things are consumed or produced.
例如，目前，与测量和理解我们的水箱中溶解的氧气水平一样简单而重要的事情尚未使用任何规律性完成，也没有对我们的储罐中至少十二个其他元素和化合物来完成。因此，连续监视这些内容应有助于进一步改善我们的成功。
对水化学的理解和监测的改进也可以使我们能够准确地确定我们的蛋白质撇渣器和其他过滤设备正在从水箱中取出的东西，以便我们可以补充以更精确的方式去除的关键事物。同样的令牌也可以使它可以看到每个撇渣器的效率，以便更精确地确定哪种撇渣器的工作最佳是可能的，而不是此撇油器中的gunk比灰褐那个撇渣器。
在这方面,我寻找持续改进n skimmer design and efficiency to continue. The use of DC pumps has been the first step so now I look for the next step to be more efficient design so that skimmers will take up a smaller and smaller footprint. And as mentioned above, with improved measurement of water quality and what each skimmer is removing and at what rate, we may find that with this improved efficiency it becomes less and less necessary to run a skimmer 24/7.
We may find that it is only necessary to run them an hour after feeding the tank for a period of time and then shut them off so that plankton and other microfauna can reproduce without being removed from the system by our efficient skimmers. This greater efficiency will also reduce the electricity used by our systems. This in fact is one of the biggest improvements I see in our hobby, more efficient use of electricity.
In addition to seeing it with protein skimmers, I also see it with the return pumps and devices used for creating flow in our tanks. In my own tank I recently switched over to Ecotech’s Vectra pump from the Dart Hybrid I was running, and the efficiency has reduced the amount of electricity used by my pump as well as the amount of heat introduced into the tank from the pump. Both of which are factors that I believe will be improved upon even more so in the future with our water moving devices.
以类似的方式，我现在使用的Gyre泵使我可以删除其他四个传统的动力头，同时在我的水箱中产生相同或更好的流动。尽管该产品已经超过一年了，但其设计和效率已经有所提高。因此，将来我希望这些泵或其他一些移动设备的效率更高，因此最终将大多数动力头都不会在我们的水箱中使用。
Just as the improvements in the future of the products mentioned above are incremental, I look for the same kind of incremental improvement to come in lighting. As many of us who have switched over to LEDS have found, you can not only keep coral alive, but you can get it to grow and reproduce just like we did under metal halides and before that fluorescent tubes.
So in the future for these lights I see them also becoming more efficient and brighter as well as less expensive, with the latter being the key to getting even more hobbyists to switch over. I also see the programming for these lights becoming more elaborate so that potentially in the future instead of just being able to follow a simple template the programming may allow for the lights to simulate what is occurring on a reef in Fiji or Indonesia and with the number and variety of diodes being present that the light will be a close approximation to the light that is hitting the reef I one of these locales.
但是，尽管桑杰（Sanjay）喜欢热带地区的黄色光线，但像我这样的蓝色狂热爱好者可能更喜欢深水的模拟蓝光。但是，由于这些改进的灯光，由于任何可能的一切可能，我们都应该能够将我们的灯光微调到比现在更大的程度。
为了进一步，通过改进的照明和监测，可能可以将月光周期结合在一起，并与礁石上的温度和盐分变化以及其他因素匹配，以便组合可以更好地模拟获得的条件我们的圈养珊瑚将在我们的坦克中产卵。
Having coral spawning with regularity in our tanks in the future is indeed a possibility and would help promote the hobby in a number of ways. First it would show that we could eventually grow our own corals without having to take any from the sea. What would be better than to show regular spawning occurrences in hobbyists’ tanks.
其次，如果现在发生的情况，发生了广泛的漂白事件，我们可能有可能帮助重新引入数百万的珊瑚平面，回到受伤的礁石上，并帮助它更快地恢复。第三，有趣的是，在封闭系统中的珊瑚产卵事件中实际发生了多少杂交。虽然我意识到这听起来可能很牵强，但我认为在我们的坦克中更频繁地发生圈养的珊瑚产卵会比我将来看到的其他一些事情要早。
Having said that, one of the aspects of the hobby that will need to be improved upon in the future in order for this to occur is that a better understanding of coral nutrition. While keeping corals in bright light and that is all they need to sustain them is no longer the rule, there still needs to be a better understanding of what foods corals need, both in terms of size and composition for our success with them to reach the next level.
While there are myriad coral foods now on the market, none to my knowledge have done even a simple study to show that when two coral frags are grown in similar conditions and one is given product X and the other given nothing or a competitive product, the one given X grows, faster, more colorful, etc. Doing these types of studies is what will allow us to get to a better future of understanding exactly what our corals need nutritionally.
A similar understanding also needs to be undertaken with the food we feed our fish. Again while there have been major strides in providing our fish with better food, there still need to be studies done of what foods need to be supplied for each fish in order to optimize not only its size, but also color and most importantly to help it survive even longer than it would in the wild.
In addition, in the future this should happen as we move more and more towards captive breeding of a great many of the fish we keep rather than taking them from the wild. When looking at the success that a facility like Bali Aquarich is having with fish that once were thought to be impossible to breed and raise in captivity like Tangs and Angelfish, it is clear that the future will bring even more success.
想想那天，黛比利乌斯（Debelius）和国王的神仙鱼（King Ganselfish）被俘虏和饲养，并且很容易获得，就像一些稀有的深水仙女斗篷和anthias一样，我们只能在图片中流口水。将来，我希望设施弹出并生产这样的鱼类，因为现在的设施现在种植了无数的小丑和其他鱼类的鱼和黄油鱼。
Just as propagation of fish in captivity may help bring more individuals into the hobby, in the future I expect to see more and more facilities producing more and more maricultured and aquacultured corals as well. I also expect that the future will see us bring in corals from distant areas that to date have not been the source of much of our coral.
However rather than like the past where initial coral harvesting was done with whole colonies being shipped from a region, I expect these new regions will start off doing mariculture from the start. As a result there will be little if any impact on the reef and the tourism that a healthy thriving reef brings in. Instead I see this as a way for a region to advertise their reef and the uniqueness of their corals to a group of individuals that admire and enjoy the reef as much as their scuba diving brethren.
As more and more entities begin mariculturing corals I also expect that as the amount of product increases the price will at worst stay the same or at best come down some. I say that, as in my opinion in order for the hobby to continue the exponential growth it has seen the price of some things need to come down in order for newer and younger hobbyists to join the hobby. I say this as I can’t see this hobby continuing to grow in the future when the prices for the main point of the hobby: coral, are beyond the means of most beginning hobbyists.
因此，希望随着供应的增加以跟上需求，未来将在珊瑚的价格上带来更多的理智。我还认为未来将带来越来越多的水产养殖设施。由于稀有和独特的颜色碎片似乎继续增加需求，因此市场将使越来越多的个人进入水产养殖，因为显然有钱可以赚钱。因此，就像曾经只有少数人这样做的那样，未来也应该带来数十个设施的珊瑚。
I know there are potentially a lot of things I have forgotten to mention in this piece, but due to space limitations these are the things I see happening in the future. As I mentioned there are some things that could slow the hobby down, such as increased government intervention or even outright bans in some areas. Or increased regulation or supervision as to who should keep tanks and how they should be run, but fortunately I now think that there enough of us that at least we would make some noise if this were to happen.
I will however point out my biggest concern about the future, and that is that I worry that not enough kids and teenagers are getting into the hobby due to its cost and other reasons. So while the future is bright in terms of what are success in the hobby and what innovations might occur, these would be wasted if new young hobbyists do not join our ranks.
因此，作为一篇文章，我读到的话说：“让您的孩子进入珊瑚，这样一岁，他们就不会有毒品的钱”。大家节日快乐，我将在新的一年中写新的东西。
