A tribute to Lee Chin Eng!

[Humblefish]

Back in the 1980s I used to read books/magazines all the time about the marine aquarium hobby. Most of the information was geared towards high powered filtration and keeping everything sterile. Most saltwater tanks were full of dead bleached coral skeletons, coarse sand and a single fluorescent tube for lighting. But one day I ran across a tidbit about Lee Chin Eng's "natural method" and investigated to learn more...

Lee Chin Eng was a man of Chinese descent living in Indonesia. Back in the 1950s-60s he designed and documented a "natural" system that was capable of keeping corals & inverts alive, AND some of his fish even spawned in captivity. He used live rock, airstones for circulation and utilized natural sun light so the corals could grow. His idea was that marine systems are more successful when using live rock/sand + natural seawater than a sterile environment void of the organisms that complete the nitrogen cycle. So maybe he is @Paul B's long-lost brother or something?? I've dug up some articles (below) if you'd like to read more about one of our founding fathers:

https://reefbuilders.com/2017/01/28/milestones-in-the-reef-aquarium-hobby/

http://www.garf.org/news6p3.html

https://reefs.com/2014/08/26/depth-look-natural-system-reef-keeping-part-one/

Mr. Eng's "natural method" became the basis for the development of the Berlin Method: https://perrysaquaticscentrelincoln.com/understanding-the-berlin-method-of-marine-filtration/

Lee Chin Eng in front of his reef tank circa 1960​

 

[DaveK]

I've got to say that I have mixed feelings about Lee Chin Eng and his natural method. To give him credit he was the first person to set up a salt water system outside of the traditional bleached coral skeletons and such seen before. On the other hand he never really disclosed his methods. This becomes apparent when you look at the articles published at the time in the 1960's and 1970's. They talk about how only an airstone is used and so on, but give no detail on how the tanks were set up. Quite a few people tried to duplicate this system only to end up with a tank of very dead fish and other livestock.

Later on it was generally assumed that his methods was to take live rock and cure it in tidal pools before using it in a tank. This would explain why may couldn't duplicate these systems. No one knew the live rock had to be cured, and stuff such as large sponges needed to be removed.

While a few people did get this natural system to work, the mainstream of the hobby went to using undergravel filters often with reverse flow, and found this to be a quantum improvement over the sterile, heavy mechanical filtration methods being used before. Over time this evolved to systems using trickle filters, and later berlin systems.

Lee Chin Eng was defiantly first, but it was not until the 1980s that the articles by George Smit really triggered the reef hobby we know today. That's about a 20 year difference. The hobby lost a lot of time.

 

[Humblefish]

@DaveK Lee Chin Eng also had the advantage of living near the ocean, and used NSW to setup his tanks + do water changes.