Brother Go Fish
Growing up, I was the marine aquarium enthusiast in our family. It was a little strange for someone so young to take such an adult interest in a relatively new way of keeping saltwater fish – I imported live rock before it was de rigueur for marine aquariums, I had a metal halide/ultraviolet lamp to keep it all alive, and I used a protein skimmer before they were readily available. (Do they still use wooden airstones?) My tank housed a few damselfish, a Heniochus, and a lion fish, and the live rock soon blossomed in the strong man-made daylight, with unfurling feather dusters and spindly starfish. It was a passion that eased the rocky road of adolescence and family acceptance, a world into which one could escape and hide, beneath the water, within the crevices – and it was something that seemed to hold no interest whatsoever for my brother, so diametrically-opposed were we back then.
That’s why it’s all the more cosmically/comically strange and amusing that he should be the one with a 125-gallon reef aquarium today. Such is the weird and wonderful way the world works. This set-up, just a few weeks old, is already pretty impressive – vibrant with colorful fish and blossoming corals. My brother asked me to get a few photos last time I was visiting, and while photographing fish is far from an easy task, I managed a few decent shots that convey some of the beauty he has assembled.
