Saltwater Fish

Protecting this fish can save Caribbean reefs

Caribbean reefs could be wiped out in as little as 20 years unless reef grazers, such as parrotfish and urchins, are protected. A recent report is showing it’s not just the threat of global warming causing corals to bleach out…

Guppies and Gonioporas make a wonderfully perplexing combination

I have a soft spot in my heart for guppies. I got bit from the aquarium bug thanks to the guppie tank my Dad had when I was just a wee lad and later on had my own crop of…

Memoirs from Asia, the Gramma dejongi

“Oh hi there! I’m a little bit nervous to meet you, and I hope you don’t find my accent too thick”. I’m not good with introductions, but i’m planning to say that to my new owner when I meet him…

Captive Bred Mandarins Return…But Only for a Moment

After Scott Fellman’s well-written rant surrounding the explanation and loss of ORA Mandarin Dragonet production, the collective breeding world pretty much wrote off seeing captive-bred Synchiropus spp. for the foreseeable future. I echoed Fellman’s sentiments recently in my own story…

Florida officially bans import of Lionfish

Ret Talbot has just reported on his “Good Catch Blog” the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commissioners today have unanimously proposed a set of rules that ban the importation of lionfish from the Pterois genus and sets other rules for the harvest and possession…

Attend the MBI Workshop, get your own Lightning Maroon Clownfish

The Marine Breeding Initiative wants to give you a Lightning Maroon Clownfish. That’s right. We are not fooling. The Lightning Maroon Clownfish was almost too good to be true when discovered back in 2008 and thanks to hobbyists like Matt Pedersen and…

O-‘By-The-Way’-RA: Did you notice the OTHER new captive bred fish?

Yeah…we’ve know about this one for a year, and yes, they kept it on the down-low from the general public.  Casually mentioned within ORA’ s announcement of the first captive-breeding of Priolepsis cincta, is the “oh by the way” recognition of…

These pygmy seahorses officially the cutest things ever

We don’t throw words like ‘cute’ around often here at Reef Builders, but when we do you better believe we mean it. When you look at these images of Bargibant’s pygmy sea horses (Hippocampus bargibanti) you are instantly captivated but when…

The Kole Tang: A Commendable Surgeonfish for Medium-Sized Aquariums

Among the so-called bristletooths of the genus Ctenochaetus is one of my favorite tang species and one that I highly recommend to other hobbyists with well-established, medium-sized to moderately large systems—the Kole tang (Ctenochaetus strigosus). Physical traits C. strigosus, which…

ORA cracks into breeding the Priolepis Goby genus

Hobbyist aquarium breeders have been tinkering with gobies of the genus Priolepis for at least a decade now, and based on my own personal experience with P. hipoliti (the Rusty Goby), they are downright challenging to keep alive past 24…