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Diving with Coral Fish

For many people, coral fish are the ultimate way to brighten up an otherwise drab home. There is no environment on earth as teaming with bright, colorful, exotic life as the coral reefs of the world, and so getting yourself coral fish helps you capture some of that beauty and bring it back alive on to dry land. Think about your living room, glowing with living flashes of oranges, reds and blues, ducking along amongst patches of light and shadow, weaving too and fro, and chasing each other around the coral reef aquarium. This is what gets people so hooked on coral reef fish. Unfortunately, it is not the whole story.

There is no pet that is more temperamental, more expensive to purchase and maintain (or at least to maintain) and more likely to die well before its time despite your best effort, than coral fish. The problem has many sources. One of them has to do with the nature of the coral fish environment. They naturally live in a place teaming with life. There are certain predators which chase them, and certain things that they instead feed on. There are other coral reef fish of the same species swimming around, and they have to stake out territory and find mates. There are various bacteria and other organisms, as well as tides to keep the water consistently clean. Deprived of even one of these many factors, coral fish tend not to do nearly as well. And there is just simply no way for your average coral fish owner to provide them with all of this.

Add to this some other problems too. For one thing, your house has things in it that are not good for the fish. It is a funny thing about contamination: no matter how carefully you seek to avoid introducing it, it inevitably sneaks its way in to the fishes environment. There are bacteria, molds, and mildews, even in the most meticulously clean house, that will sooner or later, find their way inside the coral fish tank, where they can grow on the sides. And once your coral fish catch one of these diseases, they will be dead before you have even the slightest chance of figuring out what is going on with them. There are things that you can do to try to protect your coral fish from dying in this fashion, but all of them cost money, and none of them are really a hundred percent effective.

Julie Hart is a freelance writer, her latest article is Diving with Coral Fish for Scuba Diving Ireland

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