Back from the Solomon Islands with a new personal view of the reefs

When I first agreed to join a major aquarium fish and coral importer on a trip to the Solomon Islands, I blindly agreed knowing that there would be lots of reef fish and corals and diving involved, but I really…

Heading to the Solomon Islands to find all the corals & fish

There’s something utterly surreal about being in Fiji as we write this, not at the final destination, but having a layover to even more exotic corals and genera coral reef diversity. We are headed to Honiara, Solomon Islands with a small…

Pros and Cons of the aquarium hobby being so expensive

Recently I became involved in something I hadn’t done for a long time: helping a total newbie set up his first reef tank.  Initially he wanted to set up a 300-gallon reef, but after we came up with the list…

Top 10 signature corals from Jason Fox

When it comes to one-man coral farming and coral collecting operations, few have had the staying power of Jason Fox and his incredible selection of diverse and exotic corals. The success of Jason Fox is not by chance, or great…

Pictures of cool cryptic corals from the Flores Sea

When we get corals through the regular distribution channels, we are at the mercy of the coral collectors in Indonesia and the Pacific Ocean as to what corals they collect, and most often these will be known species that are…

Unique observations of the natural habitat of Acropora suharsonoi

As far as cool “mythical” acros go, for us Acropora suharsonoi has always been one of the be-all unique and beautiful small polyp stony corals for the home aquarium. As an SPS lover, getting our hands on this species for the…

Pachyseris inattesa is a newly described coral from the Red Sea

Pachyseris inattesa is a new species of plating stony coral recently described from several locations around the Red Sea up and down the coast of Saudi Arabia. Colonies of the newly described Pachyseris inattesa was previously confused as belonging to the Leptoseris genus…

Gardinoseris sighted in never before seen colors

When it comes to little known oddball corals, Gardinoseris is by far one of our super favorites with almost no known aquarium specimens in the reefing hobby. Therefore when we’re gallivanting in the parts of the Coral Triangle as we did…

Convict chalice Echinophyllia documented in its natural habitat

Convict chalice corals are specimens of Echinophyllia plating colonies with a very distinctive series of stripes running usually from the edge of the oral disc (mouth) to the colonie’s edges. The lines of convict chalice corals can be very dark, or…

Favites monticularis is a spikey new species of stony coral

The moon brain corals of the family Faviidae have yielded some interesting new species lately, but the newly described Favites monticularis will stand out in your mind, literally. Favia camranensis was certainly neat with its shingle-like corallites but the spiny corallite walls…