by AquaNerd | Jun 5, 2014 | Corals, Equipment, Industry, Science
Although we’re pretty caught up in the Interzoo hype, we haven’t forgotten about all of the amazing corals that attract us to this hobby in the first place. To prove my point, we’ll now shift our focus to a really interesting find from our friends at , an East Coast marine aquarium livestock wholesaler based out of North Carolina. They recent received a batch of hammer corals from North Australia, and as you can clearly see in the images and video, they are full of what appears to be eggs. These eggs have accumulated in the tentacle tissues of the coral, with some of them forming large bundles and others freely floating within the tissue like ping pong balls trapped in an aquarium. We don’t see any of these eggs being released into the water, but clearly something out of the ordinary is going on here. Kris Cline, owner and Operations Manager at Carolina Aquatics, says that in his 18 years in the hobby and industry, he’s never seen anything like this. And to be honest, neither have we. I mean, we’ve seen corals spawning in aquariums before, but never have we see this sort of egg accumulation in the tissues and be this visible. Kris went on to explain that the exporter told them that the Euphyllids are spawning on the reefs right now, and did it around this time last year too by AquaNerd | Jun 3, 2014 | Corals, Events, Funny, Science, Tanks
More new products from Tunze today, as they’ve unveiled their magnetic algae scraper at Interzoo. Called the Care Magnet, this new scraper sports a thin, ergonomic handle to which plastic blades are attached at either end. This patented algae scraper has an inconspicuous profile within the aquarium, making it less obtrusive to the look of the tank while also letting it slip behind rocks, plants, and corals with ease. The Care Magnet’s patented features center around the scrapers themselves. It uses plastic blades of varying lengths, which place different pressures on the glass or acrylic during its use. This allows the narrow blade to remove tough algae, such as coralline, while the wide blade allows the magnet to tackle larger areas or places where the algae is easier to remove. This unique design allows the Care Magnet to work in tight corners and even on curved aquariums, while at the same time not scracthing up the inside of the tank. The inner magnet is said to be 3mm from the walls of the aquarium, which prevents sand from getting stuck between it and the glass. That said, the strenth of the magnets is said to make separation of the scraper “nearly impossible”. In addition to that, the blades on one end can be removed, effectively turning the Care Magnet into a handheld algae scraper by AquaNerd | Jun 2, 2014 | Corals, Science, Tanks
Interzoo has only barely begun, but we’ve already determined that De Jone Marinelife has the best display reef tank at the show. We don’t even need to look at any of the other tanks to make that decision either. This tank is just way too stunning to be second to any other. It is full of amazing corals and an elaborate rock structure that don’t look like they were just thrown together for one show. Instead, this looks like a mature, full-blown reef tank. We don’t know the size of this aquarium, but given the massive array of AquaIllumination fixtures, we’d say this tank is well over 300-gallons and probably closer to a 500. Besides this tank, Interzoo is playing host to hundreds of amazing display reefs and planted aquariums. We are deeply jealous that we can’t actually be there in the flesh, but in this case we will settle for living vicariously through the Facebook posts of others. by AquaNerd | May 27, 2014 | Corals, Photography, Science
As aquarists who frequently dabble in the realm of photography, we can appreciate this new product from Houston-based acrylic fabricator, Building an Obsession. Announced just a couple of days ago, BAO has a swanky new top down box for DSLR style cameras, which, as you could imagine, would make taking photos of corals so much easier. The top down box features a 6″ deep carbon fiber tube that mounts to the camera via the universal tripod mount. The lightweight tube sports a crystal clear acrylic window that helps keep water off the lens while also preventing distortion of the images. The top down box also has an optional “lip clip”, which is an add-on that lets you better stabilize the camera be letting users mount the entire assembly to a tank rim or eurobrace. The clip is adjustable to allow for various angles of shooting. The first batch of these top down boxes is complete, and each will retail for $50 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?
