Up close with the beautiful corals of Lubang Island, Philippines

Around this time last year, we were invited to visit the budding coral farms that RVS 4-Star Mariculture is developing in the Philippines. Several sites are planned for future coral farming efforts in the Philippines, and we managed to visit the beautiful…

Mermaids, Megalodon, and Cyanide: A Real Look at the Aquarium Trade and the Battle Against Cyanide Collection

The ocean is full of the unknown, allowing people’s imaginations to run wild. Combine that with film producers, writers, or groups with a divisive agenda, and you get mockumentaries entertaining the idea of a monster shark as big as a…

Top 10 crazy clownfish collected in the Philippines recently

Over the last few months, RVS Fishworld has been crushing it with their offering of awesome Filipino reef fish. This high level of quality fish is particularly evident when it comes to collecting rare, aberrant, hybrid and otherwise really unusual clownfish…

What do air compressors have to do with aquarium corals and fish?

We are back from an epic road trip through central Indonesia where we’ve been looking far and wide for rare fish and awesome corals. It is safe to say our journey was a success however, this really got us thinking…

3.4 Fairy Wrasses: The filamentosus group

The filamentosus group presents the reader with a collection of familiar, aquarium-friendly species, many of which are exuberantly colored and morphologically quirky. Despite some superficial differences in colors and fin shapes, the overall morphology strongly implies that this is the…

Nature likes to design wild clownfish too!

Nearly all Picasso and designer breeds of clownfish in captivity today are influenced by genes from just a handful of exceptional wild clownfish. The Joker clownfish pictured here is one such example of a “natural” Picasso clownfish that was collected…

3.2 Fairy Wrasses: The temminckii group

The temminckii group plays host to some of the genus’ larger and more unappealing species. Burley, pugnacious and often glazed in matte grey, these un-fairy looking fairy wrasses are more often than not associated with the ugly duckling sobriquet. Despite…

Macropharyngodon moyeri discovered and collected in the Philippines

Being a self-proclaimed fish nerd my interest gets piqued anytime one of those ‘rare to the hobby’ fish becomes available, even if it is a type I am not normally excited about. But when a particularly enticing specimen comes available, well forget…

Sensational new ‘Mandarin’ cat shark collected in Philippines (updated)

The Mandarin Cat Shark is an exciting new species of shark which has just been discovered collected in the northern Philippines. The incredible pattern of the ‘cat shark’ has an uncanny resemblance to the beloved Mandarin goby, and we’ve never seen a shark…

Helfrich’s firefish discovered in the Philippines

The Helfrich’s firefish, Nemateleotris helfrichi has been discovered in the Philippines, extending the species range by more than 1000 km, or 600 miles. The recent finding is important not only from a fish ecology perspective but it also puts this fish within…