That's How It Happened

There is an insidious trend in corporate decorative aquaria that's really angered me. Increasingly in flash restaurants and hotels you see freshwater aquaria disguised as marine aquaria. Poor unfortunate cichlids and catfish are made to live in tanks full of marine sand and dead corals. The reason for doing this is that marine aquaria are very difficult to maintain, and slow to set up. The stark white sand and eerie tree corals look great though, especially with a few bright freshwater tropical fish swimming about. Prime culprits include the £1500000 custom tanks at Yauatcha and the tanks in all department stores selling Creme de Mer.
Quite apart from the fact that this is deceptive, I think there are three main reasons why it is fundamentally unethical:
1. These tanks are deliberately keeping fish in the wrong environment, and suboptimal water conditions, which can only lead to ill-health and frequent replacement of stock.
2. Dead corals are harvested to provide a backdrop. Most punters probably don't even realise they are dead. Keeping live corals is already environmentally unfriendly, but purchasing dead corals is truly destructive, and illegal in most of the countries where the coral is "poached".
3. The most typical fish kept (as pictured) is the Parrot Cichlid. This malformed manmade sterile hybrid can barely swim straight. The most outlandish colours are produced by hand dyeing. It would obviously be preferable to keep captive bred actual species in their natural colours.
I am not naive enough to suggest any political action, but if you keep an eye out for the mal-adaptive parrot cichlid, you'll probably notice some of these evil aquaria. You don't have to boycott or protest to gladden my heart, but disapproving stares might be in order.
Now that's off my chest, back to the usual irreverent irrelevant linking:

A photo of a penisbird perched on Bill Oddie's head.

"One surfer didn't even paddle in after the attack; he had to be talked ashore." Waves must be really overcrowded in Sonoma County if an 18 foot man-eating great white isn't enough to scare you out of the water.

Where is Saddam's pistol? In the Oval Office of course!.

Got an eskimo to insult? You need the Racial Slur Database.

Geek DIY is full of cool projects, including build-your-own G4 Mac, and the open source Big Mouth Billy Bass. Nerd alert, nerd alert!

A robot made of Lego that solves Rubik's Cube. Just flabbergasting. So best, evs.