by AquaNerd | Jan 28, 2016 | Industry, Reef, Science, Technology
Euroquatics has announce the release of their new lamps featuring the E5 LED technology. These lights can be used in existing T5 fixtures as replacement bulbs for T5 lamps and are much brighter and longer lasting than the predecessor T5 technology. Euroquatics is providing AquaNerd with some sample lamps for a product review and you can follow our testing on future blog posts. We will be taking PAR readings with a BioTek Marine PAR sensor and discussing these lamps in detail after they arrive and we begin to check them out. The highly efficient E5 lamps are designed to work in sync with original T5HO fixtures. These unique products showcase features that create an eco-friendly aquarium lamp that lasts up to five times by AquaNerd | Jan 26, 2016 | Reef, Science
Let’s face it, anyone that has ever stepped foot in the ocean has had that moment where something unexpected touched your body beneath the water resulting in a “you tube” worthy series of epic jumps and arm flailing that put the best ninjas to shame. Most of the time, it’s just a piece of sea weed or an annoying relative, but have you ever really thought about the odds of a shark attack? Well fear no longer! Statistically you are more likely to die from fireworks (1 in 340,733) or from accidental poisoning (1 in 19,456) than a shark attack. Worldwide, there are 70 – 100 shark attacks a year, with only 5 – 15 of those resulting in death. Most of the time, if there is an incident, by AquaNerd | Jan 24, 2016 | Equipment, MACNA, Reef, Science
Daniel Nguyen and the guys at Reef Life Support Systems (RLSS) have been working on an exciting new wave maker device known as the WavePuck. Slightly smaller than a hockey puck, this is the 1st public viewing of the 3D printed prototype. I first had a sneak peak at the device this past September at MACNA in Washington, DC but until now I had to keep this information under lockdown until now. Daniel, the owner of RLSS in Canada, has developed a low profile magnetic pivotal wavemaker. At a nominal 1.5″ thick x 3″ footprint, it is now the lowest profile wavemaker device of its kind. Today RLSS announced plans to produce 4 models of the Wave Puck with the 1st model generating a maximum flow rate by AquaNerd | Jan 16, 2016 | Fish, Reef, Science
Paleontologists have discovered the fossil remains of the world’s biggest ocean-dwelling crocodile buried on the edge of the Sahara, a creature that was twice the size of anything seen today. Named Machimosaurus rex, this croc would have weighed in at least 6,600 pounds and been around 32 feet long. Other than its size, it would have looked much like a modern day crocodile except for its narrow snout – which was designed to allow it swim in the ocean. Related: Fossils of 3 new crocodile species found in Peru It would have been the top predator in what was then an ocean that separated Africa from Europe about 130 million years ago. “This is an incredibly big crocodile. It is twice as big as a present day marine by AquaNerd | Jan 15, 2016 | Fish, Reef, Science
Indeed, the future of human habitation, whether through choice or catastrophe, is often imagined (in popular culture at least) as being beyond Earth’s orbit. Sub-aquatic living still seems, perversely it could be argued, very alien. Not so for Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut. He has revealed ambitious plans for a series of underwater eco-villages that could house up to 20,000 people each in the future. His Aequorea project imagines entirely self-sufficient, spiraling “oceanscrapers” reaching to the sea floor from mangrove-covered marinas on the surface of the world’s oceans. Jellyfish-like in appearance, each oceanscraper would be constructed using recycled plastics from the misleadingly named “Seventh Continent”, or Great Pacific Garbage Patch (much of the debris here is believed to be in the form of
