Building Blocks To "The Big Idea"

 

One of the great artifacts of our “modern” social media culture is the way we share our work. These media have given us a tremendous vehicle to distribute our ideas and experiences to large numbers of fellow hobbyists with an ease that the hobbyists who came before us could scarcely imagine. 

It’s cool. It’s amazing. It’s transformational.

However, it’s also created a sort of urgency to only share what we feel is our ultimate work- our best. 

And that's a real shame. Because the work that it took to get to the tank that you think might be your best may have been just as awesome, in ways you might not have even appreciated at the time. The precursors to your brilliant tank could serve as an inspiration, a lesson for other hobbyists as they take their journeys with their own aquariums. 

For every amazing aquarium that you create, it’s likely that there were a few which came before it. Perhaps they weren’t quite as amazing. Maybe they weren’t all that impressive. They might have even been what we- our own worst critics- would call “shitty!”

Yet, each one provides us valuable experience, and serves as a “building block” for the aquariums which follow. The lessons learned, the mistakes made, the problems overcome, all serve as valuable lessons and inspiration for others. And these tanks should be shared just as prominently as those which we feel are so amazing.

Because they also teach a valuable lesson for hobbyists:

Everything we do helps advance the state of the art in the aquarium hobby. Each new tank- no matter how awesome we or the world think it is-gives us experience, ideas, and inspiration to do other tanks that perhaps bring us closer to the idea that we had in mind. And it can influence other hobbyists to do the same.

I can't tell you how many times I've done a "thing" or "things" which were based on some idea, some inspiration, or some thought that I had about how to execute an aquarium, which may not have gotten me "there" right from the start, but taught me all sorts of things along the way too ultimately arriving where I wanted to be.

It often starts with a concept..an idea.

...Until it gradually emerges into a more "polished" configuration.

.

Now, often an idea will start based on something we see in Nature. Perhaps an element of a habitat that we like. Perhaps, it will dovetail with some sort of hypothesis we have, and lead to other executions to prove out the concept. Case in point was the evolution of my idea of replicating leaf litter beds in a "leaf-only" aquarium. 

 

As I become more comfortable with the idea of a significant number of leaves, removing the "extraneous" materials became a lot easier!

Ultimately, I arrived at my "leaf only" concept. It just took a few iterations and steps.

And of course, the idea of "substrate-centric" tanks didn't' stop with leaves only.

And that led to further developments in this arena- more realistic executions of substrates, to further the idea of biodiversity and function.

The reality is that, to get to the "destination" we have in mind, the journey can be long, filled with tests, turns, triumphs, and dead ends, and failures...but it's just that- a journey. One which is often as satisfying as the destination.

---

---

Leave a comment

Name *

Email *

Comment *