This year, we commemorated the first anniversary of our great friend’s passing. The coral feast that I had planned to show him and that was left unfinished, ended up into another great adventure celebrating Jake’s coral love with other great…
Off timing coral spawning spotted in South Sulawesi
How much do we really know about corals? The answer is: Not so much, actually. While the general rule for coral spawning is a few days after the full moon, 2 hours after sunset, just before the water temperature high…
Pavona clavus: A Nerdic Experience!
There are some corals, that can only be appreciated by certain people. They are not colorful, nor grafted, nor multicolor, nor with long tentacles, nor unique… They are just plain brown, and still, they’re amazing. It often takes the power…
Crazy Ludicrous Chalice in the wild!
Once in a while, you come across a coral during a dive, and you can’t not share it with everyone. This was the case during an exploration dive in the south of Sumba. Exposed, high swell, cold up-wellings, everyone was…
Watermelon Chalice is a stunning coral
While diving in North Sulawesi, we came across a fantastic small colony of Oxypora lacera, the Watermelon Chalice. While this color morph is quite common in Australia, it’s quite rare in Indonesia. The perfect red colony color, with a green…
The Mother of all Cynarina lacrymalis found on the Great Barrier Reef
Ania Nerowski, our own Australian-based coral nerd, has reported to us a fantastic coral that showed up in Australia. Cynarina lacrymalis, the Button Coral, is normally a solitary, monocentric, one polyp, one mouth coral. Double or triple heads sometimes show…
Are Resting Copepod eggs the next Aquaculture revolution?
A Norwegian Aquaculture company has brought to market a very interesting product that could be the next revolution in the ornamental fish breeding industry. Until now, prey culture has always been the bottleneck of marine fish aquaculture. But C-Feed has…
Dendrophyllia ijimai might just need too much food
I have seen these amazing Non Photosynthetic Scleractinian (NPS) on a few occasions, mainly in exporting facilities around Indonesia. Dendrophyllia ijimai is a stunning bright orange, thick branching azooxanthellate coral. But with quite a lot of diving under my belt,…
Acropora derawanensis is a true gem!
It’s been a long time since we talked about this very fine coral and recently, during a dive trip, I got lucky and came across one. It’s one of our all-time favorite Acropora and this particular specimen was a lot…
Do blue LEDs narrow our reefkeeping choice?
I’m lucky enough to be able to dive some of the best reefs the ocean gods have given us, but there is not a single dive that I pass a coral or a fish, and wonder why they are not…