[Applause]
one day when I was seven years old I
went over to my friends house and he
showed me his new aquarium it was small
with a couple of fish and snails but I
was just so captivated by this miniature
underwater world
I loved the colorful fish darting
through the plants and the snails
gliding across a glass so naturally I
had to have one
so I pestered my parents over and over
again and then finally I got a fishbowl
now the fishbowl was not good enough
soon I had all these Tupperware tubs
full of fish and then those turned into
actual aquariums
so then years later my room ended up
looking like this yes it ended up
looking like this in 2015 and here’s
what it looks like right now and this
clicker is very bad all right so what so
what is it that has made me devote my
entire life to keeping these aquariums
because I’ve kept about 30 of these over
the course of the past 10 years well
through my involvement in the hobby I’ve
met a number of different hobbyists and
I’ve noticed that each and every one of
them is drawn to a different aspect of
the hobby for some they like collecting
rare and expensive corals such as this
mushroom coral which sold for $6,000 for
others an aquarium is a form of therapy
it’s relaxing
they keep aquariums for the aesthetic
so whatever the purpose may be many
different people with extremely
different aspirations goals and
backgrounds all find their place in the
aquarium hobby so what is it that draws
me to the aquarium hobby for me it’s the
challenge of replicating a natural
ecosystem in a glass box it’s just so
fascinating to me that a fish that used
to be swimming in the ocean or a lake is
now swimming around in my tank whenever
people look at my aquariums they admire
all the pretty colors but they
completely overlooked the amount of
thought work and research it takes to
replicate a natural ecosystem one of the
most challenging animals I’ve ever kept
is the seahorse and so the aquarium
store owner had warned me their pain in
the neck to keep he said but that made
me more determined to keep the seahorse
so I got the seahorse it came in a
little plastic bag looking all innocent
and cute but then it proceeded to make
the next two weeks of my life a living
hell
as it refused to eat anything and then
finally one day just started taking food
and such as in nature of the aquarium
hobby sometimes you get lucky and
sometimes you don’t and it’s up to the
Aquarius to maximize his or her chances
of getting lucky with the seahorse I
tried so many different foods and so
many different ways of trying to entice
it to eat and I’m sure my tremendous
efforts greatly maximize the animals
chance of survival another small problem
I encountered the seahorse is that they
need to be fed twice a day and each
feeding session takes about 20 minutes
so I’d often be late to school because I
was feeding my seahorse so
on these days when I was late to school
I just have my mom feed me breakfast
while I was feeding the seahorse huh
thanks mom in this hobby I love how
there’s always something unexplained
always a new frontier to explore even
for the aquarist over the Monterey Bay
Aquarium keeping animals such as these
filter-feeding invertebrates is a huge
challenge even for them and this just
puts everything in perspective in some
sense everyone is on the same level I
also strongly believe that keeping
aquariums can greatly influence our
personal lives sure keeping cats or dogs
it takes a lot of work but keeping sea
horses and live coral it’s on an
entirely different level it’s more like
a science or an art it can help foster
creativity and a desire to explore it
can test our patience and teaches
problem-solving and improvisational
skills as so many problems can just pop
out of nowhere
furthermore the state of an aquarium is
constantly evolving
just as our lives I have devoted
countless hours to my animal collection
with each new animal I acquire I face
new challenges and discover new things
even if I make a single mistake they can
die even if I don’t make any mistakes
they sometimes still die it’s hard and
it’s frustrating and yet it can be so
rewarding when the animals flourish
under my care thank you [Applause]