Taras V Pleskun interviews Philip John Foronda of the Philippines Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources, and finds out why seaweed aquaculture is such an important industry. Please Introduce yourself and how you first got into the aquaculture industry. Hi!…
Education
The Jekyll & Hyde Chemistry of Phaeobacter gallaeciensis Bacteria
During the Fall of 2016, I was an undergraduate studying aquaculture at the University of Rhode Island. Like other aquaculture students, I was given an opportunity to work in one of the department labs as an assistant. It so happened,…
Saltwater Beginner Series: Can I convert my freshwater tank to a saltwater tank?
Yes, virtually any aquarium can be converted to saltwater, as long as it doesn’t contain any parts that might rust like iron or steel. Glass and acrylic aquariums are the best for saltwater conversion but if you run an aquarium…
NOAA Educational Poster can Help Reef Aquarium Newbies too
We came across this poster recently on Coral Housekeepers, and how fish help to maintain healthy coral reefs in the wild. It has been produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and explains in simple, easy-to-understand language how…
Reefing Hot Takes Part One: Organic Nutrients and N-DOC Testing
I’ll discuss my “hot takes” on the reefing industry in this new series. In this first installment, I will cover N-DOC testing and the importance of measuring organic nutrients for our tanks. What is an N-DOC test? N-DOC is a…
Amphipods are the “Bees of the Sea”
We stumbled across this excellent infographic by Marine BioDiversity of Yucatán on Amphipods. We knew they could be found pretty much everywhere, from freshwater to saltwater, under rocks on beaches to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, but we didn’t…
Could Purple Non-Sulfur Bacteria Change Reefing?
The future of the reef aquarium industry is microbial. Microbes hold many of the nuanced secrets behind the long-term health and reproduction of corals, reef fish, and invertebrates. All of these creatures are a sum of their associated microbiomes and…
FAQs on Phytoplankton Part 2
Phycologist Taras V Pleskun answers more of your most frequently asked questions on Phytoplankton. Is the algae I scrape off the front glass phytoplankton? Yes and No! Though this is more an exercise in wording, there is a profound difference…
Reef Microbiology Part Two: The Immune System
In this installment of the microbiology series, I will provide a more technical explanation of the coral immune response. Introduction to Immunology Immunology is the study of the immune system. There are two broad categories of immune responses – innate…
Reef Microbiology Part One: The Holobiont
In this series, I hope to bring a magnifying glass to the invisible world populating our tanks – the microbiome! The first installment of this series will focus on the microbes living in and on our corals. What is Microbiology,…