Today is payday, Your local fish store has just unpacked a new shipment of marine animals and your significant other has given you the greenlight to go and pick out a new fish (or two)…What an exciting day! While driving…
Are Feather Stars STILL Best Left in the Ocean?
Feather stars and sea lilies are echinoderms classified within Class Crinoidea. They easily capture the hearts of new and seasoned hobbyists alike, and find their way into home aquariums due to their beautiful outer appearance and the graceful way they…
Reef Builders Celebrates its 20th Anniversary!
Reef Builders, the World’s Biggest Reef Aquarium Blog, is celebrating 20 years since its conception. Founded in 2004, Reef Builders’ original mantra was to “obsessively cover the saltwater aquarium industry,” and 14,830 articles, (and twenty years later,) it’s still doing…
New Fish Species Discovered: “The Grumpy Dwarf Goby” (Sueviota aethon)
Only a week has passed since researchers released exciting news announcing the discovery of a new fish species determined to belong to the Gobiidae family. The small fish, measuring 9 - 17 millimeters in length, was identified in the Red…
Algae – The Solution to All Your Problems
I know what you’re thinking. Why would I keep ALGAE on purpose? Much less buy it to PUT in my tank?I would have agreed with you almost 15 years ago. When I got my first saltwater fish tank as a…
A Research-Based Approach to Dendrophyllid Corals
Though the overwhelming majority of articles intended to be applied as guidelines for marine aquarists are based on anecdotes and present personal, undocumented evidence as husbandry guidelines and recommendations, an explanation as to ‘why’ a technique or practice works is…
An Interview with NPS Coral Pioneer Boris Bielan
You think keeping NPS corals is difficult now? Try doing it 11 years ago! Florian Gaudig speaks to NPS coral-keeping pioneer Boris Bielan. While researching for my last article, I came across a ReefBuilders feature I had read years ago…
Call to action: Share your Linckia starfish experiences!
We all know about the infamous blue Linckia star, Linckia laevigata, and its depressingly poor survival record in captivity. Hailing from the Red Sea to Australia, Linckia laevigata is a common sight on reefs between 1-10m and is often even…
Cryopreservation Comes to Florida Coral Conservation
An ambitious, new scientific project aims to preserve endangered corals using cutting-edge cryopreservation techniques. The latest phase of this groundbreaking work is happening this week at The Florida Aquarium’s Coral Conservation and Research Center in Apollo Beach, Florida, in collaboration…
How to Maintain Suspension-Feeding Sea Cucumbers
When most hobbyists imagine sea cucumbers, or holothuroid species as they’ll be referred to later, we envision bottom-dwelling detritivores with little personalities whose slug-like bodies made their way into our tank simply to serve as valuable members of the clean-up-crew. …