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Epic Lego Reef Spied at Interzoo

by | Jun 13, 2014 | Corals, Fish, Science, Tanks

Reef tanks and Legos. It’s an aquarium nerd’s match made in heaven. At this year’s Interzoo, there have been a lot of interesting and amazing reef aquariums, but this one takes the cake for originality. Tropical Marine Centre, like most companies in attendence, have a booth with a reef display. But they didn’t confine their love of reef fish and corals to just a glass box. Instead, they let their creativity take over and assembled an awesome looking Lego reef, copmlete with Lego fish, Lego corals, and Lego live rock. To top if off, they even have a Lego fish assembly area for anyone willing to test their building skills. As for the Lego reef, it is full of pure awesomeness

10 Most Expensive Tropical Fish Named

by | Jun 12, 2014 | Fish, Science

The internet has a severe obsession with lists, especially top “insert random number here” lists of whatever obscure parameter could be thought of. While we tend to avoid them like the plague, we do entertain them when it involves aquarium related stuff…like this list of the 10 most expensive tropical fishes. To no surprise, the list was almost completely comprised of marine fish, 8 out of 10 in fact, with just a couple of insanely expensive freshwater fish taking the top two slots. This list, like most others, isn’t completely accurate but it does include several holy grail level fish that very few of us could ever afford and continue to pay mortgages and car notes, or keep our spouses. On to the list. The bottom 8 fish on the list of the most expensive tropical fish include: 10. Candy Basslet – $1,000 9. Clarion Angelfish – $2,500 8

Something A Little Different…

by | Jun 5, 2014 | Conservation, Fish, Science, Tanks

Figure1. The new larval rearing room at TAL; showing the 120 Ltanks used to grow octopi in.  We've also recently tested our fish species in them which we'll talk about next time.  At the Tropical Aquaculture Lab in Ruskin, we’ve been running into lots of bottlenecks in the early larval development of some of the Rising Tide species we’ve been working on.  We believe these issues were exacerbated due to our current larval rearing systems being inadequate to provide the pristine water quality necessary for larvae to survive.  Because of this, we’ve spent the past several months upgrading our facilities, to what we believe will be an important step toward significant advancements in captive raised marine ornamentals. Figure 2. 22 day old common octopus paralarvae Upon nearing completion of the new system, we were approached by Mote Marine Laboratory’s cephalopod specialist Brian Siegel; their common octopus (Octopus vulgaris) had spawned, and they were curious if we would be interested at giving them a go.  Rising Tide’s focus is primarily on the captive propagation of marine fish species, but we thought this would be a great way to test out our new larval rearing system.  Common octopi have been reared in captivity at several institutions around the world, but with very low survival, believed to be due to poor water quality and nutrition.  We’re hopeful the improvements we’ve made to our system will allow us to have some success with these challenging cephalopods. Cephalopods have incredible abilities to adapt to their environment using chromatophores, which are pigment-containing and light-reflecting organelles found within their cells.  They allow the octopi to communicate as well as camouflage to their environment.  Even as paralarvae, these common octopi can create beautiful patterns with their chromatophores, as seen here: Common octopus paralarvae have a voracious appetite for crustacean zoea in their natural environment, and have been successfully reared by substituting with Artemia nauplii as a prey item throughout development.  By providing them with a constant supply of pristine seawater along with microalgae and Artemia nauplii, we’ve reached 28 days post hatch today.  We’re hopeful they will remain strong enough to survive to settlement. The Rising Tide team at the Tropical Aquaculture Laboratory

The Rare Japanese Spotnape Cardinalfish is Another Addition to the ORA Lineup

by | Jun 4, 2014 | Fish, Science

Cardinalfish are no strangers to the marine aquarium scene. The hobby has seen plenty of species from this group make an appearance, though the trade has been primarily focused on two in particular, the Banggai cardinal (Pterapogon kauderni) and the Pajama cardinal (Sphaeramia nematoptera). Despite the overwhelming popularity of these two species, Oceans Reefs & Aquariums is testing the waters with a newly aquacultured species from Japan, the rare Spotnape cardinalfish (Apogon notatus). As noted on the ORA blog, the Florida-based fish breeders acquired a batch of wild spotnape cardinals, but due to a lack of information being available, they didn’t really know what to expect in terms of behavior, feeding strategies, breeding, etc. But that didn’t stop the experts from giving it their best shot, and after some time they were successfully breeding the fish and learning all sorts of information about them. One of the biggest takeaways from rearing this fish is that, despite their muted colors, a small group of these cardinals is quite striking. They sport “silvery, rose gold colors” as ORA puts it, along with a spot just behind its eye and one on the tail. The fish has a maximum size of 4″, and their social nature makes them great for community reef tanks. Though ORA is having loads of success with this species, they are at a bit of a crossroads. They can either continue to raise and breed the fish, assuming there is a commercial demand for them, or they can shift their focus toward other species