For some reason this weekend we happened to stumble onto a handful of videos that all have an old school slant to them. The first video of Ganzel’s Reef embeded above definitely has a new school cinematic approach but we couldn’t help but smile at the diversity of corals represented; Sarcophyton and Lobophytum leather corals as well as a nice covering of Green Star Polyps in large patches of the reef tank. Elegance corals and otehr Euphyliids are also given a prominent placement in this 130 gallon reef which also sports a fair share of SPS and zoanthids. To cap it off the video also shows the equipment running this reef which all shows some old school do it yourself sensibility with plenty of foil, zip ties and duct tape. Well played Ganzel, well played. Follow the break for lots more old-school video clips including an SPS and clam tank that looks straight out of the mid-90s/Modern Coral Reef Aquarium kind of tank, an unusual soft coral tank using natural sunlight yet it’s populated with a handful of extremely rare fish, and finally a video of Acanthastrea lordhowensis spawning shortly after being imported to the U.S.
If back in the day you spent any length of time staring at the beautiful german reef tanks that were pictured in Daniel Knop’s clam book or Fossa and Nilsen’s Modern Coral Reef Aquarium series then the reef tank in the video above will seem eerily familiar. This Old School aquarium is a 1990s reef tank if we ever saw one: the closely spaced Acropora colonies that arenearly all species from Fiji and the huge numbers of Tridacna clams totally date this set up. The fish population including the black tang are all also representative of typical 20th century selection. You can even tell by the folding at the bottom of the frame that this video was originally made in analog. In any case this is a beautiful reef tank even if the aquascape is a little bit ‘last millenium’.
Who would have thought to mae a ginormous reef tank filled with the most common and fastest growing soft corals and then populate it with a gem tang, a pair of conpic angels, a joculator and a wide stripe basslet, Liopropoma latifasciatum? This video especially took us by surprise because soft corals and rare fish are not exactly complimentary colors but at least this way some of the coralivorous fish won’t eat the decorations. Kuds to the ceator of this tank for building a soft coral forest on top of a much easier to clean bare bottom and for using natural sunlight to light up this rare fish adn csoft coral display; perhaps next time the video will be made with sunshine beaming on the softy reef.
Finally we have for you this video from BuyTheReef of some spawning Acanthastrea lordhownesis. Only a day or two after touching down in their coral systems BTR noticed that one of their acan lord corals was releasing egg and sperm bundles. When they returned with the camera and began filming, they noticed that nearly all of the acan lords were in the process of releasing their gametes. Most corals and especially mussid corals take many months to start producing eggs and then time their release to coincide; these Acan lords must have had their gametes ready to go right when they were collected and something finally triggered them to release en masse once they made it to Ohio. Note to self: Acan lords probably spawn in October since that is when ECC posted this video.
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