J u n e 2 017 53 Tube Anemones
were still using metal halides
or even more were using T5
lighting. When they were run-
ning LEDs they ran them more
towards the 12-14K tempera-
ture range rather the higher
colour temperatures that are
used in the States. This lack
of running their lights at the
higher colour temperature with
more blue light in my opinion is
why there may be a perceived
difference in how colourful
they think American corals are.
Having seen many European
tanks in my travels, I think many
of these tanks are at least as
colourful as American tanks.
I also think American corals
seem more colourful because
the internet often portrays the
most vivid corals frags, and due
to the photographic techniques
used, these look, in close-up,
more colourful than full-grown
colonies. Unlike in the States,
when most Europeans buy or
trade corals off of the inter-
net, they do not allow these
corals to be photoshopped to
improve their colours. In the
States this is an all too common
practice, but from what I have
been told, in Europe if a vendor
uses photoshop to enhance the
colours of their corals they are
often ‘called out’ and when this
occurs, the reefing community
there stops buying their corals.
So needless to say, some corals
that are seen on the internet in
the States have been photo-
shopped and are not as nearly
as colorful as they look. This
practice of photoshopping cor-
als has actually become so bad
that most buyers now know
that they need to look at all of
the material surrounding the
coral in order to ascertain if the
coral has indeed been photo-
shopped before they buy it.
Getting to the bottom of it
So, other than colour percep-
tion and the price each of us is
willing to pay for corals, what
other differences are there?
Well, the next big difference I
noticed is that most European
tanks still run with substrate or,
in a lot of instances, deep sand
beds. From the tanks I saw, the
bare bottom tank that is widely
used in the US is not used as
often in Europe. When I asked
my friends why they didn’t run
bare bottom tanks the main
reason I heard was ‘aesthetics’.
That is, they felt that a tank with
substrate looked significantly
more natural than a tank with-
out, and to be honest I must
agree that this is true! When we
discussed whether running a
tank with substrate also meant
that they could not run strong
current I was told that that was
not really a concern in that if
they directed the current prop-
erly and used bulkier substrate
instead of fine sand, they could
keep the substrate from moving
about. While I agree that a tank
with substrate is pleasing to
look at, I am still not convinced
that the substrate can be kept
from moving about.One thing I should point out
is that, unlike some of our
perceptions here in the US, the
countries of Europe are not
at all like a ‘United States of
Europe’. While in the States we
all seem to do things at least
to some degree in a similar
fashion, in Europe each country
I visited was different from the
others. Most of the reef tanks I
saw in England were larger than
those in Italy on average, and
those in Germany were also on
the larger side and to me had
some of the best equipment
on them. These German tanks
were also organised in the neat-
est fashion of any I have seen
anywhere. As one might expect
the tanks in Italy were done in
such a way that they added to
the aesthetics of the home, that
is they had some “style” to them
for lack of a better term. This is
not to say that the English or
German tanks lacked this, it just
seemed that these Italian tanks
were not just “a tank” per se, but
were more a piece of state-
ment furniture in the home
that complimented the rest ofAn American tank from over 10 years ago when large colonies were more
frequently kept in the USA US tank showing both large colonies as well as space that has been cleared out
to grow new fragsAn impressively coloured US tank that may be “too blue” for some tastes.