Not your ordinary fish The Commerson Frogfish (Antennarius commerson) or Giant Frogfish is a large species that can reach up to one foot in length. This frogfish species has a wide range, it can be found in the tropical Pacific…
Search Results For: mimicry
Survival on the reef part 3: Distractions and decoys
Continuing with our mini series on reef fish survival techniques, we stray away from mimicry and take a look at how some fishes use the art of distraction to fool their predators. Not everyone has the ability to conceal their body…
Survival on the reef part 2: Cover and concealment
In our previous installation of reef creatures and their survival techniques, we talked about mimicry and how certain mimics have evolved to copy their models for protection. In this second part, we take a look at animals who display protective…
The Saddled Toby: Puffer Personality in a Small Package
Sometimes good things come in small packages. Such is the case with Canthigaster valentini, better known as the saddled toby, black-saddled toby, or Valentin’s toby (you may also see “sharpnose puffer” substituted for “toby” in various sources). Reaching only about…
Survival on the reef part 1: Masquerading under false colours
Look at this amazing pair of Meiacanthus grammistes. Eh hmm…wait a minute. That’s not quite right. Look closer. Cardinal fish? Bingo. This is a pair of Cheilodipterus nigrotaeniatus and they are excellent mimics of their venomous fang blenny models. Mimicry is an…
7 Questions with Steinhart Aquarium’s Matt Wandell
We thought it would be fun to do a series of “7 Questions” with people in the industry and hobby. Our first candidate is a Matt Wandell, a marine biologist at the Steinhart Aquarium at the California Academy of Sciences…
Recap of this week’s new products to create an aquarium reefscape
By some neat coincidence, this week witnessed the announcement of four new products which have a different approach to building a mini reef aquarium aquascape. Each of this week’s artificial reefscaping materials represent novel solutions to using an alternative to live…
ORA Breaks the Blenny Barrier – Captive-Bred Red Sea Mimic Blennies!
Today, ORA announced the successful breeding of the Red Sea Mimic Blenny, Ecsenius gravieri, and with it, the impenetrable blenny-barrier has been broken. For years if not decades, it has seemed that the successful captive breeding of the combtooth Blennies from…
Cirrhilabrus squirei gets range extended like a trailing caudal fin
Cirrhilabrus squirei, one of the newest additions to the Fairy Wrasse stable, has until now only been known from a small area on the Great Barrier Reef and one reef in the Coral Sea off North Queensland, Australia. A recent…
E-Jelly and LED bait for the Giant Squid win
After years of searching for live giant squid and hoping to film them in their natural habitat, who would have thought that LEDs in artificial jellyfish known as E-Jelly would be part of the trick to reeling one in. Last…
