Gary Parr
  • Reef Threads is a podcast and blog that discusses the most interesting subjects from the various forums, blogs, and magazines supporting the reef hobby. Reef Threads is produced by Gary L. Parr and Christine Williams Pasagelis, two veteran reef hobbyists.

    Gary has been keeping aquariums for most of his life, starting with a 1-gal. bowl of guppies. He has kept reef aquariums for the past 15 years. His current tanks are a 65-gal. LPS and leather reef and a 40 breeder that contains azooxanthellate corals. Gary’s other hobby is photography. He specializes in macro photography and currently spends most of his time photographing coral and marine fish. You can see Gary’s work in the Reefs and Animals sections of his website, www.gparr.com. You can contact Gary at [email protected].

    Christine Williams started keeping fish while she was still a fetus. While the aqueous environment did lend itself to the hobby, it limited her to freshwater species, and so she decided to be born several weeks early. Through sign language, she demanded that her parents convert her crib into a reef aquarium and thus started her illustrious career in marine ornamentals. After completing her studies in biochemistry and molecular microbiology she went to work at “Animal ER” where unfortunately she was not filmed for the Animal Planet channel (though her feet did make a cameo during a rescue segment). She frequently lectures on reef topics including marine animal disease, fish husbandry, human-tank zoonosis, and fish cognition. Contact Christine at [email protected].

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Recent Content

Getting Close To Small Polyps

Getting Close To Small Polyps

When I travel, I like to spend at least one evening of a trip visiting a hobbyist and photographing his/her corals and fish. In 2010, I had a trip to New Orleans and made myself available to hobbyists in the area. I was able to make three visits that week. One of the...

You focus on the eyes!

You focus on the eyes!

Rule number one when photographing animals (that includes humans) is to get the eye(s) in focus. Your mind will accept just about any animal photo if at least one in-focus eye is present. If not, you tend to seek something else to look at.    That's a nice rule to...

They Call ‘Em Sun Corals

They Call ‘Em Sun Corals

As common names go, few corals carry a more accurate name than the Sun Coral moniker often applied to Tubastrea coccinea and Tubastrea aurea. Their yellow and orange colors are unmatched by any other sessile invertebrate.    When photographing my Tubastrea colony, the...

Persistence and Luck Deliver at the Steinhart

Persistence and Luck Deliver at the Steinhart

Last week, while on a business trip to San Francisco, I had the pleasure of visiting the Steinhart Aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences. It’s a terrific place and it should be at the top of your list should you find yourself in San Francisco. You’ll discover...

Into the Abyss

Into the Abyss

During one of my trips to Florida last year I had an opportunity to photograph the beautiful display tank in the Coral Corral store in Tampa. One of the many corals in the aquarium was this, I believe, Acanthastrea bowerbanki. What struck me was the polyp depth. They...

Coral Forest

Coral Forest

Photographically, corals aren’t really interesting to me until I get close. As I move in, there is a point at which I enter a kind of alien world and start to see things I don’t normally see. This photo of Seriatopora is an example of that alien-world effect. When I...

Isolation

Isolation

This image is 3 years old, but still one of my favorites because of the story behind it. The image was created during a visit to the fish room of Rich Dietz. Most know him as Mr. Firemouth. We spent the better part of a day talking about reefs and photographing his...

Seeking More Than a Fish Photo

Seeking More Than a Fish Photo

Whenever I photograph fish, my first goal is to get a good, sharp photo of the whole fish with a relatively clean background. Once that’s accomplished, I work to capture something better. This past January I visited Rick and Terry Loewen of Tropical Reef Corals,...