Step into Tim Weidauer's living room in Kearns or Mark Peterson's in Centerville, and the glow from and graceful motion within their large aquariums immediately attract attention.
"There's my little ocean," Weidauer says, welcoming guests.The two are president and treasurer, respectively, of the Wasatch Marine Aquarium Society, a local association of hobbyists who grow miniature reefs in their homes - enclosed saltwater sea worlds alive with bright fish and other creatures, including swaying anemones and stonelike coral in a rainbow of shades.
"Corals," explains a recent poster, "are tiny animals, called polyps. . . . Each coral secretes a stony cup of limestone around itself as a skeleton. The polyps divide as they grow and form coral colonies. As the coral colonies build up on top of each other, they gradually form a coral reef."
Besides the beauty coral aquariums add to their lives, the club's members find their hobby to be educational and perhaps even vital - propagation of the world's coral species in environments like theirs could one day prove crucial, Weidauer says.
On Saturday, the Weidauer and Peterson families will welcome the public into their homes as part of the society's second annual Coral Reef Aquarium Tour, which also recognizes 1997 as the International Year of the Reef. Nine other locations in Salt Lake, Davis and Weber counties will be featured on the tour. (For more information, see C2.)
When Peterson describes the inhabitants of his 75-gallon tank, the species of the creatures - for even those that look like stone are as often as not alive - sound familiar yet unfamiliar. Let's face it, "dogs," "cats" and "gerbils" are much more common as pets than "sinularia," "finger leather" and "mushroom coral." His mushrooms come in purples and greens and reds. Coralline algae encrusts exposed surfaces.
Swimming around and about are a lion fish, a feathery goldfish-chomping carnivore; an incredibly yellow tang; a red-striped wrasse; and a variety of damsels, including several clownfishes wearing white masks. A collector urchin clings to a corner, two small pebbles attached to the creature, justifying its name. Snails and hermit crabs live there, too. "We call them `reef janitors' because they're the cleanup crew," consuming algae, Peterson says.
Though the fish love to see Peterson hovering around, for his presence may mean food is at hand, they are also quite territorial. He points to a black-and-white striped fish. "If I put my hand (in the tank), it will nip at me and chirp at me." Fish grunt, too, he claims.
Weidauer has two tanks in his living room, one a 100-gallon, the other a 55, the latter formerly the subject of controlled tests as he tried to figure out which soft animals and which reef builders worked in what environments and which filtration systems worked best for them.
The larger of the two is a watery world with an impressive variety of mostly stationary creatures - plush fox coral, mossy green-star polyps, lush Caribbean sea mats, a collection of acropora (true reef builders, which secrete calcium) and several types whose descriptive names hint at other things entirely: yellow leather coral, cabbage coral, frog spawn and red brain coral. Cinnamon clowns, fire fish, a blue tang and a mandarin fish call this home.
How does one develop such an interest?
"What really started this," Weidauer says, "was we moved into this house, and my wife's brother had this aquarium in his garage." The couple decided to make use of it and also were drawn to saltwater environments, "because they're more colorful, more diverse.
"I set it up with saltwater, but it turned into a sea of green algae. The system we had was not working."
That led to two things: A few years ago Weidauer was a founder of the Wasatch Marine Society (Aquarium was inserted later), and the Utah club members began ex-perimenting with unusual filtration systems.
"All of us have learned an incredibly large amount in a short period of time," Weidauer says.
Peterson, who'd kept fresh-water aquariums since high school, was also interested in saltwater aquariums because of their beauty. He learned about the organization from a note posted on a pet-shop wall. He joined, and the members (about a half-dozen at first; today there are 80 to 100) began sharing what they knew, propa-gating the species they had collected and making contacts with scientists and coral farms alike.
The mini mountain range of coral in his large aquarium, Weidauer says, is built upon a base of ocean rock and Idaho aragonite, a form of mineralized coral, but 75 percent of the living creatures were tank-raised, by cloning, making divisions and letting the coral divide naturally. The other 25 percent come from ocean sources and pet stores.
Both men use natural systems to keep their undersea worlds healthy - and, unlike with most aquariums, they haven't had to change the water for months.
Below his aquarium Peterson keeps a large tote box half-filled with water - and algae. Water is piped out of the tank into the container. The algae are given light in the night to balance out the daylight growth above. The water in the box, reoxygenated by the algae, circulates back into the aquarium.
"I haven't had to change the water in here for a year now, and the tank is doing great," Peterson says. The natural filtration - along with the "reef janitors" upstairs - keeps the pH levels stabilized as well "and makes a great amount of difference on the health of the coral and the fish."
Weidauer's system includes small mangroves growing in an area below the aquarium, as well as a layer of "grunge" at the bottom of the tank in which helpful bacteria are allowed to grow. In addition to fish and coral, the little community includes crabs, snails and worms.
"There's no mechanized filtration at all," Weidauer said. "This is a full ecosystem - or as close as you can get in captivity."
He adds that there are many right ways to operate an aquarium. "This is what we promote because it's good for beginners," because of the relative ease and lower costs.
The hobbyists also believe their avocation may have practical applications. Like the earth's rain forests, coral reefs create oxygen, provide homes and shelter for other life forms and may prove a source for future medicines. The reefs are vital to the planet's food chain.
Hence the International Year of the Reef, declared to foster scientific research and to raise public awareness about the reefs, their roles and their endangerment.
The complex and diverse coral reef ecosystems "are home to a dazzling array of marine life - nearly a million species," notes a brochure on subject. "Up to 3,000 species may co-exist on a single reef and the density of fishes is 100 times great than the ocean average."
But the world's tropical reefs are endangered - by storms, predator infestations and such human-generated threats as overfishing, coastal development, sewage and fertilizer runoff and poorly managed recreational activities.
"At present 10 percent of the reefs are degraded and another large proportion is in serious degradation," Weidauer notes. And although reefs are found in oceans around the globe's equatorial regions, 90 percent of them have yet to be truly studied.
"It really is the undiscovered realm of our world," he adds. "Yet we're destroying it."
Because scientists and hobbyists seek to learn more about coral reefs - understanding how they grow and what they need to survive - and propagate the many varieties, the world could con-ceivably benefit if something disastrous should happen to a reef system, say, a red tide wiping out Australia's Great Barrier Reef. If the genetic base is dispersed by such interest, research and the development of coral farms, "in theory we could reseed a reef," Weidauer says.
But among the rewards great and small is the most basic of all: Raising miniature reefs and developing saltwater aquariums is simply enjoyable.
"We're having so much fun at it we kind of forget our jobs sometimes," Peterson says.