Now that Global Pet Expo is behind us and the dust is starting to settle, we all huddled in the Reef Builders War Room and picked our Top 4 Global Pet Expo product releases to look out for. There was plenty to see and experience at the show and while many of the products are geared towards the mainstream aquatic audience, we pulled these products out as the ones to really watch out for this year:
Cobalt Aquatics Egg Rocker
Egg Rockers and Egg Tumblers are nurseries for the spawn and progeny of captive bred fish, usually mouthbrooders. While the Egg Rocker as a device is probably going to get a lot of usage from the African Cichlid breeders, this type of device could also do wonders for increasing the clutch size and hatch rate of our beloved banggai cardinalfish. The Egg Rocker comes in two sizes, a 65mm model for $49 and an 80mm model for $59 with actual retail prices probably coming in a little under that when they hit the streets in June this summer.
MetaSorb UHC
MetaSorb UHC is a unique new product from Two Little Fishes with an Ultra High Capacity to instantly remove heavy metals from aquarium water. The tiny polymer beads are incredibly effective and fast acting removing heavy metals from your aquarium in a flash. Two Little Fishes is pitching MetaSorb UHC as a kind of super-Poly Filter, minus the pad, with one tiny pouch of the stuff being able to remove heavy metals from 250 gallons of water. MetaSorb UHC’s active ingredient was actually developed to do environmental cleanup, so its rather fitting that Mr. Sprung find purpose for it in cleaning up our own captive environments.
CaribSea Life Rock
CaribSea’s Life Rock is a new product that is designed to look like coraline-encrusted live rock but without the risks of unwanted pests from adding cured live rock. The CaribSea Life Rock is actually mined aragonite rock which has been treated with a purple coating to make it more attractive and providing an invisible coating of bacterial film making it chock full of all the microbes needed to get the biological cycle jump started in a saltwater aquarium. The biggest boon about Caribsea’s Life Rock is that it should be one of the most competitively priced rock choices for building a proper reef tank. Imagine being able to buy reef rock, at about the price of base live rock, with both the purple color and similar biological properties of cured live rock.
ReptiSun LED + Hybrid
Although the ReptiSun LED UVB is made for scaly pets of the terrestrial variety (reptiles), the combination of LED and T5 lighting technology is an exciting platform just begging to be reapplied to aquatic purposes. ZooMed designed the Reptisun LED UVB to serve dual purposes in terrariums, the LEDs being there for illumination and supporting plant growth while the single high output T5 is designed to produce UV light for the well being of reptiles and amphibians, to stimulate Vitamin D production for healthy bones and shell. The simple design of the ReptiSun LED UVB is simple, but effective. Plus the combination of bright fluorescent lighting and 12 full power LEDs per foot means that the ReptiSun LED UVB could lend itself extremely well to life as an aquarium fixture in the future
