Coral health and survival largely depend on the interaction between the host coral, a photosynthetic symbiont algae, and an associated community of micro-organisms. Hence, constructing a genetic dataset of the entire coral community, or so-called the coral holobiont, is essential for understanding their molecular interactions.
The Mummy Eye chalice coral has been around the hobby for a long while but it is still one of my favorites. The striking beauty of this coral and the bright pigments of the captive grown specimens can not be overstated. This coral was grown from a seed fragment...
Our friends Richard Ross and Matt Wandell were recently featured in Wired talking about their expedition to the Philippines and efforts to collect and rear pygmy seahorses. The incredible photos speak for themselves, Matt and Rich are having a lot of success raising...
Over the past year while working on our Rising Tide project, the larval rearing work has focused on the Purple Masked Angelfish Paracentropyge venusta. We had success on our fifth rearing trial in getting the larvae to the juvenile stage.…
This Bubbles & Bettas blog post is an useful reference, as is the video below.
Are you nuts about bettas and want to learn even more?Â
The adult specimen is unlikely a Clarion x Passer hybrid because it was collected well north of where Clarions exist. The shape and pattern on its body (namely its broad white stripe) also point to this being an amelanistic Passer Angelfish.
I quite like the scientific word for stings, envenomation. It sounds more impressive than ‘getting stung’. I have never met anyone who has been envenomed (if that is actually a word), but maybe readers of this post have and might share? Lionfish venom is delivered via...
We're used to wrasses being colorful, charming fish that scoot around the reef, generally getting on with things. They might be flashing at each other, maintaining a harem or cleaning skin parasites. Rarely are they enormous. Meet the Napoleon Wrasse, one heck of a...
Following up on from my post about life in UK seas and our wonderful soft coral Alcyonium digitatum, I thought I’d share some more pictures of the fabulous life around our shores that lives in and amongst the soft coral gardens there. One group of animals we have in...
A little earlier this month, I posted some pictures of one of the largest single corals I’ve ever seen, a Porites colony on the side of a reef wall in the Red Sea. I’ve trawled through my image catalog and I think I might have found one that’s almost as big, in fact...