Dynamic aquaria. Building living ecosystems

Without doubt more a textbook than an aquarium manual, the second edition of Dynamic Aquaria contains a wealth of information for researchers, professional aquarists, and hobbyists. Adey and Loveland take the ecosystem approach to aquarium design and maintenance focusing on recreating enclosed aquatic ecosystems designed to match as closely as possible their ‘‘wild analogs’’. But what to some may be one of this book’s strongest points – the mass of background information from plate tectonics to the structure nephron cells – may to others prove a distraction from getting to the practical issues and frustrations of building aquaria. The book is divided into five sections with a final summary. The first considers the physical environment, including the materials used to construct aquaria, the role of substrata such as rock, mud and sand, water composition and the inputs of energy from both lighting and feeding. The second section deals with the so-called biochemical environment. This begins with a discussion of metabolism, then considers gas exchange and the ramifications of water pH. Nutrient limitation and eutrophication are then reviewed, followed by a discussion of biomineralisation and calcification. Finally, various means of controlling this biochemical environment are discussed with particular emphasis placed on the use of algal turf scrubbers rather than bacterial filters or foam fractionation (protein skimming). The authors then move on to describe the so-called biological structure from the community level through trophic dynamics and food webs to a series of chapters that describe each trophic level in turn. The fourth section of the book describes some examples of ecological systems that have been modelled in aquaria, tropical coral reefs, subarctic shorelines, estuarine systems, and three freshwater models. The fifth section, newly written for the second edition, describes two applications of the ‘‘dynamic aquaria’’ approach outlined in this book. The first is the culture of organisms especially for the aquarium trade. Using the example of the tropical coral reef, the authors quite rightly point out the paradox between the great value of aquaria to raise awareness of a threatened ecosystem, and the danger of some aquaria relying on unsustainable specimen collection in the field. They outline ideas that may help culture reef species and so remove the need to rely on collecting. The second major application described is the use of algal turf scrubbers in the treatment of waste water. These