The 2010 Pew Fellows in Marine Conservation were recently announced and not only do the researchers get much-needed money to continue their research but we get a Google Earth Marine Tour of the researchers and their work. This is a pretty cool 3D tour of the ocean and the research the Pew Fellows will be pursuing over the next three years. Read the rest of this entry »
I am a big fan of Malibu Rum and an even bigger fan after I found out that they were having an internship contest in association with Reefcheck.org. The sad part? I missed out. The contest which officially ended already selected 10 individuals to participate in a Malibu Beach internship where they will “monitor reef health and promote the preservation of coral reef ecosystems worldwide. The team of selected interns will be sent on a ten-day assignment to Thailand, the Maldives or the Philippines where they will conduct Reef Check surveys, as well as participate in training sessions and have the opportunity to become certified Reef Check EcoDivers all on behalf of Malibu.” You can read more about it at the special splash site. Know anyone that was selected? Give a shout out in the comments!
Royal Exclusiv has been talking about their new Red Dragon 3 variable speed pumps lately. Details are very light at the moment but we did found out that the Red Dragon III will be available in 3 versions. And before you dive into the details the picture above is from a last gen Red Dragon 2. Read the rest of this entry »
Reef pods (Copepods) Tisbe spp are a great food source for many organisms including seahorses and mandarins. They are great to start seeding your refugium or when about to add something that loves reef pods. These pods are shipped in high quality live phytoplankton – convenient for starting a culture for your tank. In the bag you’ll get live pods which can handle temperatures in the upper 40’s to low 90’s during shipping without much problem but it is suggested that you choose a faster shipping method. Marine Depot has these in stock for $13.99 a bag.
The Guys at Morphologic got out their amazing Canon HD camera and turned the spotlight out on the Arrow Crab. The arrow Crab or Stenorhynchus seticornis is a popular addition to some marine tanks. In the video the arrow crab does a complete stare down of the camera giving an errey stare to the viewers. Some might call the Arrow Crab the Spider Crab because if you haven’t noticed they walk some what like a spider. As a side note: The future movie star apparently lost one of its legs but after shooting the video the lost leg grew back with a “quick” molt. Ah the show business, we hear it is tough stuff.
One of the advantages of working at the the Steinhart Aquarium in the California Academy of Sciences has is being able to care for, and observe so many different animals that we might not be exposed to anywhere but a public aquarium. For instance, we display not one, but two Rhinopias Scorpion fish. These venomous fish are not overly abundant in the industry or the wild, and they don’t have the best track record in captivity, often living for less than two years and then dying mysteriously. We thought very hard before committing to putting them on display, and decided we would give it a go when two of them, a Rhinopias eschmeyeri and a Rhinopias frondosa (though there is some debate as to their being different species), became available last November. Since going on display they have been eating well, shedding regularly (normal behavior) and challenging guests to spot them among the corals.
An explosion of phytoplankton has reached alarming levels in the Baltic Sea consuming outrageous amounts of precious oxygen and choking out aquatic life creating one of the largest marine “dead zones” on the planet. As part of nature’s cycle, small blooms are the status quo but with plenty of fuel of phosphorous and nitrogen from agricultural fertilizers and sewage, the Baltic ecosystem is literally being choked away. Read the rest of this entry »
Nano Customs might be releasing a new T5/LED light for nano aquariums or at least playing with the idea. This prototype light fixture is milled out of billet 6061 with a integrated passive heatsink & active cooling system for the T5s. The actual T5s are 20 watts each (you’ll get two of them) plus 10 PAR38 (5 on each side) MCPCBs in the fixture which comes out to 12″ x 6.5″ x 1.5″ which is a great size for nano aquariums. “These are built to order, we are planning on making them available in the full range of anodized colors.” No price or lead time yet so we will have to stay tuned for more although we would love to see these become available in black. We can expect to see this concept fixture demoed at ReefStock where you can be certain that we will get plenty of hands on time with it.
Did you watch the Academy awards last night? If you did you would have seen The Cove win the award for best documentary series. “‘The Cove,’ directed by Louie Psihoyos, uses surreptitiously gathered footage to document dolphin hunts in the village of Taiji, where about 2,000 such animals are killed for their meat each year with the permission of the government.” However, the Japanese fishing village in the film says that their hunting practices were legal and the movie was not fair to the fishermen. “There are different food traditions within Japan and around the world, It is important to respect and understand regional food cultures, which are based on traditions with long histories” – said the office of the mayor of Taiji. Have you seen the movie? Do you think it is legal or moral?
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