by Saltwater Smarts | Apr 19, 2016 | Corals, Fish, Reef, Science
The marine aquarium hobby is second only to the US military when it comes to the number of acronyms its members throw around. (Quite fittingly, this past Monday was the 27th anniversary of my DOE. Shortly after that date, I entered BMT as an A1C and did lots of PC under the direction of a TI before going on to AIT where I got an LOR for violating the UCMJ in advance of my PCS.) For today’s post, I’d like to address a somewhat common hobby acronym mentioned in an email I received from one of our readers. He quite succinctly queried, “What the heck does ‘PE’ stand for? I see it used in online forums a lot.”The acronym “PE” has the distinction of representing two terms in our hobby. If you read it in the context of a discussion on foods and feeding, the acronym likely refers to Piscine Energetics, a company headquartered in British Columbia that supplies PE Mysis®, a popular brand of Mysis relicta, among other products. But in hobby parlance, “PE” can also stand for “polyp extension,” which is exactly what it sounds like—the degree to which a coral extends its polyps. Why does this matter by Saltwater Smarts | Jan 8, 2016 | Corals, Equipment, Fish, Invertebrates, Reef, Science
One-spot foxface, the coral munching culprit, and the new fish in town, the Atlantic blue tangCaribbean Chris, who is currently in the process of moving his family down to Florida (apparently Ohio in mid-winter isn’t sufficiently tropical for his taste!), recently tore down his 127-gallon Caribbean reef biotope aquarium and bequeathed to me a variety of different invertebrates, including several species of gorgonian, rock flower anemones, Ricordea, lettuce corals, and others, along with a lovely Atlantic blue tang. Fortunately, there was plenty of room in my 125-gallon tank to accommodate all these specimens, as it held only five fish and a few soft corals at the time. As someone who generally makes stocking decisions at the approximate pace of molasses in January (thus the low stocking rate in my tank), I, of course, had some concerns about how this influx of livestock would affect my system and whether all of CC’s valued specimens would survive the transition and thrive under my care. Fortunately, the whole process went off as smoothly as could be hoped.Well, almost as smoothly. There have been a few minor issues, truth be told. The first occurred a day or two after the livestock was introduced, when my one-spot foxface decided to feast on a fluorescent-green lettuce coral, denuding about two-thirds of its skeleton. It didn’t bother any of the other newcomers and still hasn’t several weeks on. Apparently there was just something about that one coral that proved irresistible
