Joe’s Tye Dye Acan Joey Nichole’s always has beautiful corals for sale at fair prices and this Acan is no exception.  Joey calls this beauty his Tye Dye Acan. Husbandry: In the reef aquarium, Acanthastrea corals are typically very hardy and fast growing.  They are some of the most ideal corals for fragging with a quality frag saw.  Like many aquarists, coral farmers and coral importers, Joey uses the Gryphon Aquasaw to cut through the hard skeletons of these corals.  These corals will do well in a variety of lighting conditions but it’s best to keep them in lower in the aquarium if your lighting is more intense or you are acclimating them to the aquarium environment for the 1st time. Acanthastrea Lordhowensis Traits Acanthastrea generally

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Good morning one and all, how was your weekend??? Mine was so busy that it would be impossible to re-cap everything I did in the last two days but here it is a nutshell. Saturday morning I took the dogs and picked up Syijn and we built a sweet new pallet climb over a section of sandy single track and it came out great, now everyone will be able to climb this horrible section. Then later in the day I left the house at 3:30 in the blazing heat and hurricane force winds and met Pere for a super fun ride to north coast and back. One of the first trails we did was the Secret Trail which Stijn and I worked on earlier and got to be one of the first up the new pallet climb, it was super fun.

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Pulsing Xenia, a wanderlust of a coral, requires some forethought on your part to keep the colony only where you want it in your aquariumIn discussions of coral placement in reef aquaria, topics such as spacing between colonies, distance from the light source, level of water flow, sweeper tentacles, and coral chemical warfare (allelopathy) often predominate. But there are special considerations beyond these that one must take into account when determining the best placement for certain soft corals and polyps. Here are just a few examples: Major tissue expansion and contractionWith many of the SPS corals, the difference in the size of a colony between its expanded and contracted state tends to be fairly negligible. On the other hand, with certain soft corals, such as Sinularia, Lobophytum, and Sarcophyton leather corals, this difference can be quite dramatic, with colonies in their fully expanded state easily doubling or tripling their size when contracted. The degree of a colony’s expansion can vary not just based on daytime/nighttime, but also the system’s lighting, water flow, water quality, and other factors. If you don’t take this into consideration when placing a new colony in your system, a neighboring colony that has plenty of “elbow room” (corals have elbows, right?) today might be overshadowed tomorrow. The cascade effect Some soft corals have a nice compact tree-like growth habit when they’re relatively small, but as they grow, they tend to become more loose and top-heavy and then ultimately lie over, oftentimes cascading down the rockwork (depending on where they’re situated, of course).

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Good morning friends, I have a goatfish for you today that really glows under blue-light and stands out on the reef at night like a sore thumb! When we went to Tugboat Sunday night we found these guys and Lizardfish all over the sand, some were buried while others were swimming around apparently looking for food. I still have no idea why some fish are so fluorescent while others have no apparent reaction to the blue-lights at all but as you can see these goatfish are spectacular! Our goal for these blue-light dives is to continue to explore the reef and find anything and everything that glows, it’s such a fun adventure that has changed the way i now look at the reef forever.

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10 Gallon Tek Series Water Tank BioTek Marine has just released it’s new line of Tek Series Auto Top-Off Water tanks for your aquarium. These new elegantly US crafted water tanks are now available in the Tek Series Grey and Blue cast acrylic to complement the Tek series sumps.  They are purposefully designed to match the Tek series sumps but they can easily be used alongside most any sump.   Each model features an easy access port for the feed pump located on the back left corner. Additionally, positioned on the back right corner is a John Guest style push-in connector that accepts a water feed line.  The 5 gallon model requires 1/4″ standard polyethylene water tubing while the 10 gallon Tek model requires 3/8″ tubing. Easily accessible

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Hello from one of the driest places on Earth!! I remember years ago before we moved here I had thought Curacao would be lush and green with waterfalls and streams but man-o-man were we ever wrong!! This place is lucky if it gets rain 10 times a year and right now it’s bone dry, even the cactus are suffering! During these droughts we see an increase in birds of prey like the American Kestrels and the Cara-Cara’s, for them this is easy hunting as there becomes less and less places to hide for the lizards and rabbits. I’m still taking out as much water and bird seed as I can carry to the desert every day and by early afternoon it is always gone. I have yet another fun blue-light photo for you all today that I found right in front of our Substation lagoon

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The blue-throat triggerfish (X. auromarginatus) in my aquarium exhibited repetitive behavior prior to transitioning the system to a reefFor today’s post, I’d like to elicit your thoughts on an interesting phenomenon I’ve observed in my aquarium, specifically involving an aggravating repetitive behavior exhibited until fairly recently by my pair of blue-throat triggerfish (Xanthichthys auromarginatus). Allow me to set the stage: I introduced the blue-throats to my 125-gallon about a year and a half ago when it was still a FOWLR system. Their tankmates at the time included a one-spot foxface (Siganus unimaculatus), yellow tang (Zebrasoma flavescens), tomato clownfish (Amphiprion frenatus), and sixline wrasse (Pseudocheilinus hexataenia).The repetitive behavior I’m referring to—and both the male and female exhibited it—was repeatedly swimming around the base of a powerhead mounted at the far left end of the tank (as I usually face it—you can actually view the tank from either side and one end) about 5 inches below the surface. They would swim in a circle 10, 15, even 20 times or more, briefly break away and swim about half the length of the tank, and then come right back to the powerhead to swim another set of “laps.” Both triggers fed with gusto and would swim up to greet me whenever I approached the tank, no doubt assuming more food was forthcoming, and sometimes they would stop the lap swimming and explore more of the tank for brief periods. But they would always revert to that same maddening behavior. I tried moving the powerhead next to my overflow box and closer to the surface so it would be harder to swim in a loop around it, but the triggers just wiggled their way through the narrowed pathway anyway. Afraid they’d get injured or flip out of the tank, I moved the powerhead back to its original location.

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credit: Melysa Montanos

 Trying to get the kids to eat a more well-rounded diet?  This fruit kabob pufferfish might be just the partner in health you’re looking for! It’s is a simple snack to put together, but so eye-catching, and should charm your picky, picky eater. You can certainly use any fruits you would like; this example has cantaloupe, strawberries, red and green grapes, kiwi, and pineapple, and the only supplies you need are a sharp knife, toothpicks, and wooden kabob skewers. Cut a quarter of the cantaloupe out and scoop out the fruit. Assemble the kabobs and insert into the cut out area, create the eyes with kiwi slices and grapes, the mouth with a kiwi end, and the puffer’s spines with the toothpicks. You may want to make the kabobs safer for small children by snipping off the sharp ends – the fruit can easily be skewered with a blunt tip. 

Credit: Islands in the Stream Expedition 2002. NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration

  There are more than 120 species of pufferfish worldwide, ranging in size from 1 inch long to over 2 feet in size. Almost all species contain tetrodotoxin, a substance that is 1,200 times more poisonous than cyanide; they are the second most poisonous vertebrates, after the golden poison frog. One pufferfish contains enough poison to kill 30 adult men, but some species of sharks can eat the fish with no repercussions. All puffers are found in warm environments – the majority live in salt or brackish water, but there are 29 species that spend their entire life cycle in fresh water.… More:

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Various fluorescent fishes. Credit: Sparks et al 2014

 In the ocean, longer wavelengths of light (i.e. red) are quickly filtered out, so that with increasing depth the red pigmentation of marinelife takes on increasingly inky tones. This provides excellent camouflage in the darkness and is why so many deeper-water creatures sport such vividly carmine hues. There are, however, fishes from these depths that can appear red even in the absence of ambient red light. They do so by absorbing the high-energy blue light which surrounds them and emitting a lower-energy red light, a process known as fluorescence. That reef fish were capable of this was entirely unknown until it was first documented in 2008, and now some newly published research is helping to shed light (pun!) on this poorly understood phenomenon. The source of the fluorescence are concentrations of guanine crystals contained within highly branched cells called iridophores. Through various histological and biophysical methodologies, it has been determined that at least some of the reef fishes emitting this red light are indeed able to detect it and even to behaviorally control its intensity—this implies that this red fluorescence is not merely some biochemical accident but, rather, an important part of how these species communicate with each other. Research conducted on Eviota gobies has shown that these fluorescent iridophores are capable of expanding and contracting in response to certain neurotransmitters and hormones, resulting in a dimming and brightening of the fluorescent light. For a cryptic goby like this, is this red coloration used for camouflage or for intraspecific communications? 

Red fluorescent guanine crystals. Note that many fishes have non-fluorescent guanine crystals that impart a blue or silver hue instead. Credit: Michiels et al 2008

The contractile capabilities of a fluorescent iridophore in Eviota. Credit: Wucherer & Michiels 2012

 Another group that appears to rely heavily on red fluorescence are the wrasses of the Tribe Pseudocheilini, which includes such familiar aquarium fishes as the Fairy Wrasses (Cirrhilabrus), Flasherwrasses (Paracheilinus), and the Sixline, Eightline and Mystery Wrasses of Pseudochelinus. Most species in this group occur in moderate depths (usually below 10 meters) where red ambient light is lacking, and the entire tribe is morphologically identifiable from a distinctive “double lens” in the cornea which acts as a “yellow intraocular filter”, enabling them to visualize longer wavelengths of light. 

Fluorescence in the Cirrhilabrus cyanopleura species group.

… More:

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Good morning one and all, I suppose you have already figured out this is “Blue-Light Photo-Week” and today instead of one I have two glowing creatures for you!!! Stijn showed up last evening around 7:00 and by 7:30 we were underwater and on our way. The very first thing I spotted was a little 4-inch Bantail Puffer hiding from the night in a massive pile of sea-weed. I first saw him or her with my white light and thought, “I wonder if he fluoresces under blue-light??” I quickly turned off the regular light and turned on the blue-light and almost screamed with joy underwater when I saw him under the UV light, is that amazing or what??? Stijn then noticed I had found something and swam over to my side and watched and helped light it up with his hand-held blue-light, what a cool little fish! After snapping a bunch of shots we put him back to bed and continued on our way finding glowing lizardfish and goatfish just about everywhere we looked (buried in the sand) but really nothing else, not even one scorpionfish?

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ProDibio the makers of BioDigest, Bioptim and other aquarium supplements have developed an FDA approved line of freshwater and saltwater fish medications.  The medication lineup includes 6 new products; three for freshwater ailments and three for marine. The 6 products include: Spots & Velvets for Freshwater Fish Spots & Velvets for Marine Fish Worms & Parasites for Freshwater Fish Worms & Parasites for Marine Fish Bacteria & Fungi for Freshwater Fish Bacteria & Fungi for Marine Fish <![CDATA[ #gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } ]]> Like all of the other Prodibo products, each medication is packaged and dispersed

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Are carnivorous plants your next hobby?

Craig Bingman joins us this week to talk about “hobby co-morbidity.” What is that? You’ll have to listen to find out. Download the podcast here, or subscribe to our podcasts at iTunes. Also, follow us on Twitter at reefthreads.—Gary and Christine

Sponsor: Rod’s Food
Rod’s Food website

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This will be the 2nd MACA since its inaugural launch last year in 2015.

 The Marine Aquarium Conference of Australia is set to return this year with an even bigger and better show since its inaugural launch last year in 2015. With MACNA returning to the West Coast of San Diego this year, and MACE setting to debut its first ever show in Rimini, Italy, 2016 is geared up to be one of the hottest and most exciting year for conference attendees and marine aquarists alike. The trifecta of international-trans continental conferences is taken to the home stretch this year from the 13-16th of October in sunny Cairns, Australia, home of the Great Barrier Reef and the incomparable Cairns Marine.  As with all international conferences and symposiums, MACA is a great place where taxonomists, scientists and hobbyists of all personal and professional background can mingle and interact in a casual and fun setting. Coming into its second year, MACA boasts of an even better show than its last, hinting at a great speaker line up with equally exciting talks. Reef aquarium veteran Julian Sprung and James Cook University’s toxicology professor Dr. Jamie Seymour make their MACA speaker debut this year, and are joined by returning speaker Russell Kelly, author of the Coral and Reef Finder. There is no doubt that the good people over at MACA will continue to drip feed us with more incredible speaker announcements. But until then, one thing’s for sure. Great food, great fun, and GREAT partying is to be had, and speaking from experience, you don’t want to miss this. And as usual, Cairns Marine is opening its doors to the public for a tour of the facility at the end of the show, so if you’re really on the fence about taking the trip up north of down under’s eastern coast, you need to stop making excuses and start prioritising your calendar! For more information on MACA, be sure to follow their website and Facebook page for event news and updates.… More:

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“Whadaya want from me” – Adam Lambert. Photo credit: Lemon TYK.

 I know I haven’t been on here much recently, and I apologize for that. I’ve just been swamped with work, and have been really busy. So much so that I neglected to realize that this post is coming out not on a Monday, but on a Wednesday! Barring the oversight, here’s a really cool species of lion fish with an even crazier color morph! The golden fuzzy dwarf lion fish, whose shortcomings of having a nonsensically long name is compensated by its incredible color and petite nature. 

A golden Dendrochirus bracxypterus. Photo credit: Lemon TYK.

 As far as lion fish go, Dendrochirus bracxypterus are as good as they get. Maxing in at about 6 inches, these are some of the smallest species of lion fish out there, making them some of the more appropriate pets for the home aquaria. Unlike Pterois, Dendrochirus also prefer swimming close to the substrate, often hugging rocks and other coral outcrops instead of swimming freely in mid-column. In addition to their small stature and generally placid nature, D. bracxypterus occurs in a rather rare, but incredibly stunning golden form. This gilded morph essentially has all the regular sienna portions a rich, silky gold, adding a warm and very elegant contrast to the black pectoral striations and the burnt caramel body stripes. If you’re ever in the mood for a peaceful predator (quite literally a swimming oxymoron), then the golden fuzzy dwarf lion fish is quite the pet to have. Uncommon as they come, they are worth the effort of tracking down though.… More:

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Atlantic pygmy angelfish (Centropyge argi)Having very recently departed the state of Ohio and resettled his family down in the Florida Keys, Caribbean Chris has had to part with his beloved, long-established Caribbean-biotope tank. He’s also had to come to terms with the reality that the specimens he bequeathed to me are now gracelessly intermingled with my Indo-Pacific species. So, to give CC a little inspiration (or torment his soul, either way), I thought I’d dedicate today’s post to a fish species that might be a welcome addition to his new tank whenever he gets around to setting it up—the Atlantic pygmy angelfish, aka the cherub angelfish (Centropyge argi). A denizen of the tropical western Atlantic and Caribbean Sea, this dwarf angel is a visual gem and can be a good choice for smaller systems. It is, however, rather feisty for its size, and this trait must be factored in when choosing tankmates, contemplating order of introduction, etc.Physical traits C. argi is blue overall with varying (by individual) degrees of orange-yellow coloration on its face and throat. The eyes are ringed with blue, and most of the fins (with the exception of the pectorals, which are yellow) are very dark blue, almost blackish, with lighter blue margins. Typical of marine angels, this species also has sharp, backward-curving spines on its gill covers (which are prone to getting tangled in nets).

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In the last decade, genetic data has forced us to dramatically rethink our assumptions on the evolution of stony corals (Order Scleractinia) and how best to classify them. The emerging consensus is that a pair of lineages—informally referred to as “complex” and “robust” corals—define the evolutionary history of the group; however, it has been unclear what (if any) morphological traits might actually unite the many disparate forms contained within these diverse clades. Now, some newly published research is finally helping to shed some light on the matter. The physical differences between “complex” and “robust” corals have always been somewhat nebulous, though these groups consistently find strong support when we analyze their DNA. Those in the “complex” clade show a greater tendency towards porous skeletons and branching shapes, while the “robust” species tend to be more solidly calcified and grow in flattened or rounded shapes. Think of the differences between a delicate, finely branched Acropora versus a thick, boulder-like colony of Favites. These examples typify the extremes of coral morphology, but, in truth, the distinction between these two groups is not always quite so stark. 

Tubastraea embryogenesis. Note the spherical shape and yolk-filled center characteristic of the Suborder Nefertina. Credit: Okubo 2016

 Another approach to solving this problem is to look for differences in their developmental biology. This has led to the recently published discovery that some of the earliest stages in the life histories of these corals differ quite dramatically in their structure. As seen in the above diagram, there are two competing ways for a coral to develop: 1) The center of the embryo fills with yolk and cells, with the mouth forming by an invagination of the outer wall. 2) The center of the embryo remains hollow, with the mouth formed from a U-shaped “blastopore”. 

Cyphastrea embryogenesis. Note the U-shaped embryo and the hollow center (=blastocoel) characteristic of the Suborder Vacatina. Credit: Okubo 2016

 These two ways of growing a coral correspond almost perfectly to the “complex” and “robust” lineages seen in genetic studies, though it bears mention that only a limited number of species have so far been examined in this manner. An important exception is seen in the “complex” coral Pavona, which develops the hollow embryo seen in “robust” species, but this may just be indicative of a close relationship Pavona shares with the “robust” lineage, as seen in the phylogenetic tree below.… More:

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LPSO covered in the print version of National Geographic, April 2016 edition. Online version here: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/04/basic-instincts-octopus-mating/ Text: By Patricia Edmonds This story ran in the April 2016 issue of National Geographic magazine. In most octopus species it’s customary after sex for the female to make a meal—of her partner. To avoid being eaten, the male typically “jumps on top of the female, they mate in a position where he’s as far from her mouth as possible, and when they’re done, the male runs away,” says marine biologist Richard Ross of the California Academy of Sciences. That mating behavior was such accepted science that in 1982, when Panamanian marine biologist Arcadio Rodaniche reported finding an octopus that mated beak to beak and cohabited between sex acts, his research was dismissed or ignored. Some three decades later Ross and Roy Caldwell of the University of California, Berkeley, have bred and studied that elusive cephalopod, the larger Pacific striped octopus (LPSO). They’ve confirmed what Rodaniche found—and more. LPSO mates will share dens and meals, whereas most octopuses are loners (if not cannibals). LPSOs mate as often as daily, and females lay eggs over months; in most other species, females die after raising one brood. And though most octopuses couple warily, at arm’s length, LPSOs mate with the beaks on their undersides pressed together, as if kissing (above). With all those revelations from just one species, imagine what’s still to be discovered. More than 300 octopus species are believed to inhabit Earth’s oceans, and many have never been studied.

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 All images by author The importance of chemical filtration in a saltwater aquarium is undeniable. Unlike most freshwater tanks, a saltwater setup relies on a handful of chemical compounds that bind to and absorb harmful byproducts of the nitrogen cycle, as well as chemicals and decaying matter introduced by aquarists themselves (through medications, feeding, adding new live rock etc.). There is a wide variety of media available on the market, from the most basic- ”fail proof” activated carbon, to various granular ferric oxide compounds, synthetic polymers, and other chemicals. But how to effectively distribute flow to maximize contact with chemical media and, in turn, to assure its effectiveness? Different media have different flow requirements, and there have been many advancements in the methods used to disperse flow through the various media. The simplest solution for chemical filtration, placing chemical media contained in a mesh bag in a high-flow area of the tank, suffers from the fact that the flow is distributed unevenly throughout the media bag and can also clog with debris. The solution is a separate chemical media reactor. This device is set up with either its own circulation pump, or as a loop from the main return pump, which keeps it from reducing flow throughout the system and allows for a precise control over the amount of water that “feeds” the media. The device I am reviewing today is a free-standing media reactor from My Reef Creations (MRC) called x3. The company is débuting a line of reactors; there is the x3, as well as a larger model named x5. Let’s take a closer look and see what MRC has come up with.  My Reef Creations is well-known and respected in the high-end, custom built aquarium circle, but is largely unknown to the general public. Well, MRC wants to change that by opening their doors to the public, offering quality made products with affordable price tags. The company designs and manufactures all their equipment on-site in Atlanta, Georgia, using high end materials and computer-controlled CNC machines in their facility. There are a large number of private clients, as well as public aquariums, that have engaged MRC to design and build their filtration systems. The next time you see a gigantic sump or 6-foot-tall skimmer, take a look – there is a good chance MRC built it. However, big aquariums are not the company’s only focus- they are known for custom builds of any size and shape.… More:

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Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has been hit by widespread coral bleaching, which has the potential to be devastating to one of the world’s most iconic natural wonders. Battered by record warming on land and sea the past two years, coral reefs around the world have suffered bleaching events. When that happens, corals expel the symbiotic algae living in their tissues, causing corals to turn white or pale. Without the algae, the coral loses its major source of food and is more susceptible to disease. Starting in the North Pacific Ocean in the summer 2014, the bleaching expanded to the South Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean, and Atlantic Ocean in 2015. That prompted NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch in October to declare the third ever global bleaching event – after the 1997-1999

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Today we received an official announcement from Royal Exclusiv that it will stop distributing it’s popular Dreambox filter systems in North and South America.  All pending orders will be fulfilled and processed but as of April 1st no new orders will be accepted for customers living within the Americas. Below is a letter from Royal Exclusiv’s CEO, Klaus Jansen, announcing the decision.

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