by AquaNerd | 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 by AquaNerd | Jun 11, 2014 | Science, Tanks
Vertex is expanding on their popular Omega protein skimmer line once again, this time adding internal pumps to the mix. As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago,Vertex was already teasing an Omega 180 skimmer ahead of Interzoo, but little did we know that the line would also include the Omega 200, and both would feature internal pumps. The original Omega protein skimmer, the Omega 150, debuted in 2012 and featured a Sicce pump placed external to the skimmer’s wind glass shaped body, vibration reducing feet, an adjustable pump volute, and rock solid build. The skimmer seemed to be an instant hit, prompting the smaller Omega 130 to be released the following year. Continuing on with the success, two larger models were added, which also introduced new features…primarily a space saving design that placed the pump under the bubble plate. Stepping it up even further, the 200i also gets a pump upgrade, moving from the Sicce to an Askoll motor block. The move for the space saving design comes as no surprise. Sumps seems to never have enough real estate for big bodied protein skimmers, but large tanks still need the firepower to handle those large bio-loads. by Admin | 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 by AquaNerd | 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 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.
