Last week the Federal Government’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) confirmed that, although the US trade embargo against Cuba expressly forbids the importation of a wide variety of products of Cuban origin, including aquarium fishes, there is no restriction on the distribution of [...]
If you follow my youtube channel, you've probably heard how I have to get my arms wet and really cull the 400g reef because the growth at the top is shadowing everything beneath, and those things beneath have little chance of living. I hate to have to rip out these big colonies, but there's no [...]
Since Nano aquariums have become popular, hobbyists are always looking for tiny, peaceful creatures to inhabit them. Crustaceans make excellent nano tank inhabitants because they produce less waste than fish and need less room. One deserving but misunderstood nano crustacean – the pom pom [...]
If you’re interested in scorpionfish but have a small tank, check out the tiny Caracanthus. There are four species in this genus, though only two are offered in the pet trade — Caracanthus maculatus from the Indo Pacific and Caracanthus madagascariensis from Africa. They are called Velvetfish [...]
It’s been a while since I had an aquarium; I prefer to shoot fish with a camera than keep them in a tank these days. It saves me a lot of cash as well, as both are expensive hobbies. But I can still recall just how excited I was with my first fish and invertebrate purchases, and how I excited [...]
It’s not actually surprising when you think about it. Simply put, the larger a protected area is, the better it is at protecting the species within it, but in reality, it can be a bit more complicated than that. You absolutely need to protect as much of the habitat as possible, but what [...]
The Wartskin and Painted Anglers are strange looking fish with even stranger habits. Colored specimens perfectly match the toxic sponges in their habitat, while green and brown specimens blend in with the substrate. Some even mimic purple coralline algae. They use foot-like pelvic and pectoral [...]
There are two genera of coral guard crabs commonly found in the aquarium trade – Trapezia and Tetralia – that are symbiotic with small polyp stony corals such as Acropora, Pocillopora, Stylophora, and Seriatopora corals. These corals attract and feed their tiny symbionts with special [...]