by AquaNerd | May 28, 2014 | Science
Maxspect is set to have a really busy year in 2014. Besides the new Ethereal LED fixture, which boasts some mouthwatering wireless capabilities, Maxspect has also announced their new Glaive fixture. This LED striplight will be available in two varieties, one for freshwater setups and the other for marine aquariums, with both sporting a single row of 4-core 7watt MultiChip LEDs and four individual channels of control. Speaking on control, the Glaive will utilize a handheld infrared remote to adjust the color and intensity of the fixture, as well as lighting schedules for sunrise and sunset. The Glaive will be offered four different lengths, with models being 16″, 24″, 32″, and 40″ in length. The marine fixture, called the Glaive G4-M, uses a 3000K white channel, 460nm royal blue channel, 500nm cyan channel, and 420nm super actinic. As expected, the freshwater version (G4-F) utilizes more green and red LEDs instead of being so heavy on the blues by AquaNerd | May 23, 2014 | Corals, Eye Candy, Science
We’re trying something a little different with this post and pitting two coral vendors against each other in a no holds barred battle to the death. Wait, we took that a little too far. Back it up just a minute. Over the last couple of days, we stumbled across a pair of Rainbow Blastomussa corals from two different vendors, and coincidentally both of them on the Reef2Reef forums. The Coral Kings posted their rainbow Blastomussa wellsi back in April, while World Wide Corals just yesterday shared their own beauty, what appears to be a rainbow B. merletti. Not being able to get either of these corals out of our minds, we figured we’d have a little fun with them. So, which of these two rainbow blastos do you like more? The more refined blasto from The Coral Kings that has a more strictly defined color pattern or the more raw blasto from World Wide Corals, whose color blends more freely and polyps appear more untamed? by AquaNerd | May 22, 2014 | Science
It seems like it’s been ages since we wrote about a Limited Edition Reef Farmers coral, but here we are. Steve Tyree’s high end coral outlet has recently listed this amazing LE Rainbow Strawberry Acropora from Coral Revolution, and it is truly a stunner. The corallites of this A. microclados sports a vivid blue tip a pink edge that is adorned with blood red polyps. The remaining tissue of the coral varies from yellow to green, depending on the lighting and other factors. This strawberry variant has been in captivity since the beginning of this year and has been spread to only a limited number of systems, mainly Steve Tyree’s Reef Farmers raceway tank and his personal reef tank. by AquaNerd | May 19, 2014 | Fish, Science
There are several species of angelfish that many in the aquarium trade would label as THE “holy grail” angel. The short list includes the masked angelfish (Genicanthus personatus), peppermint angelfish (Paracentropyge boylei), Abe’s angelfish (Centropyge abei), and a few more. And while each of those species is supremely rare and insanely beautiful in their own right, but they all fall short of the absolute king of the angelfish, the tiger angelfish (Apolemichthys kingi). Named for its tiger-like stripes that only get more elaborate with age, A. kingi is one of those fish that virtually never gets collected in the wild and therefore is almost never seen in the aquarium trade. I think one or two of them have ever made it into captivity, putting its rarity right up there with the most elusive of aquarium fish. Thankfully, De Jong Marinelife has somehow gotten their mitts on a beautiful juvenile tiger, as well as a peppermint angelfish, and they’ve been oh so generous with the news. by AquaNerd | May 13, 2014 | Conservation, Fish, Industry, Science
Wrasses are arguably the most diverse group of fish in the ocean, and according to a new journal entry on the Ocean Science Foundation, a new and very flamboyant member is being added to that group. To make the news even more exciting, the species was discovered not by scientific exploration, but by eagle-eyed professionals in the aquarium industry, further adding to the importance of the hobby to the scientific and conservation communities. In July of last year, Greenwich Aquaria imported a beautiful pencil wrasse from Kenya, quickly noticing the fish was different. They shared the images of the fish on their social media channels, at the same time claiming the fish was a new species. Almost a year later, that claim was confirmed in the scientific article penned by Benjamin Victor and John Randall, which we linked to above. The new species, named Pseudojuloides edwardi after Jason Edward from the aquarium store, differs from its two sibling species, P. severnsi from Indonesia and the Mauritian P.
