Marine Aquarium Projects for Home-Bound Hobbyists

Here in Ohio, we just received the official order to stay at home in an effort to limit the spread of COVID-19, and similar orders are being given all over the US and around the world. That means a whole…

Revisiting Reef Life Highlights of the Solomon Islands

The Solomon Islands is arguably one of the birthplaces of modern reef aquariums, especially when it comes to injecting the global reefing community with fun and exotic corals. There’s been some chatter about a new marine life pipeline being built…

New Discoveries of the Relationship Between Corals & Bacteria

Seems like the relationship between corals and bacteria are becoming a hot subject in the scientific world and a lot of publications on this are coming out every week. This week, we came across a recent paper describing the dynamic…

Coral Reefs are Changing in Substantial Ways

A new publication in Nature brings a very interesting insight into the current evolution of coral reefs. In this new publication, scientists describe teturning to a location on the Great Barrier Reef, where, 91 years earlier, the pioneering GBR expedition…

We Really Do Miss the Soft Corals from Fiji

Soft Corals are such an important part of wild coral reefs but as with most corals that aren’t radioactive, they are massively underrepresented in the reef aquarium hobby. We’re not talking about zoanthids, or shrooms, start polyps or any of…

Toadstool Vs. Astro Leather Coral Fight!

The recently described Anastromvos ‘Astro Leather’ coral is a very curious genus that is just beginning to receive a modest degree of appreciation. We were very fortunate to receive some live colonies from Oceans Reefs Marine Aquariums in West Australia barely…

Scuba Diving With Raiders Hotel & Dive Solomon Islands

Raiders Hotel & Dive Solomon Islands Shipwrecks and coral reefs, Raiders Hotel & Dive on Tulagi Island has something for every diver. The hotel is only a short boat ride, around 1hr from the capital Honiara, offering dive sites for…

Update: Coral Restoration, Bangka Island Sulawesi Indonesia

Coral Restoration Bangka Island It’s been nearly six months since we started collaborating with Ocean Gardener and Murex Dive Resorts on a coral identification and restoration project in Bangka Island Sulawesi. And we’re happy to report that coral fragments are…

Soft Coral Safari in the Solomon Islands

It’s not a stretch to say that stony corals represent at least 75% of the corals we keep in our tanks, both in diversity and numbers. If you don’t count zoanthids, shrooms and anemones, then there’s just a tiny sliver…

Spot The Difference Between Hard Coral and Soft Coral

The Difference Between Hard and Soft Corals It may seem simple enough, one is soft and one is hard, but can you really spot the different between these two distinct groups of coral? The biggest difference, as the name implies,…