Visit at the Bellevue H.S. Marine Science Lab

When I think back to my high school days, I remember a 29-gallon freshwater aquarium in science class. Coincidentally, I donated most of the specimens in that tank to my teacher from my home aquariums. It served as more of…

Friday Smorgasbord: Lizardfish, 100K crabs, Iron Reef and more

This interesting Tumblr has visual examples of this question “Dude, have you guys seen a lizardfish (Synodontidae) eating a fish?” The entire site is pictures of the lizardfish eating other fish and what ensues is some interesting imagery to say…

Build a “blue collar dreambox” with Custom Aquariums’ Seamless Sumps

At the Aquatic Experience in Chicago last weekend we were drawn to Custom Aquariums’ booth by the novel Siphon Stopper and H2Overflow plumbing parts, but we stayed to examine their new Seamless Sumps. Custom Aquariums might be the first company…

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…

Don’t Get Burned by Flame Scallops!

Mention beautiful bivalves for the marine aquarium, and the various tridacnid clams (the so-called giant clams) will probably come to mind. Likely, the flame scallops of the genus Ctenoides will too. However, while the tridacnids have a fairly decent survival…

DAS ReefView Aquariums include an artificial reef to hide the overflow

Dutch Aquariums Systems, a Texas based aquarium manufacturer better known as DAS displayed in Chicago last weekend an interesting new marine aquarium line called the ReefView Aquariums. ReefView Aquariums have a couple unique features going for them, the most notable…

Skullcandy mushroom anemone raises the bar for incredible Discosoma

If you needed any indication that mushroom anemones still have a lot to offer reef aquarists in terms of amazing color and pattern, you need look no further than Cherry Coral’s exciting Skullcandy Discosoma shrooms. At first glance the Skullcandy shrooms…

Dirk’s Reef Glasses enable light filtering of reef colors

This weekend at the Aquatic Experience in Chicago we caught up with America’s most infamous traveling hawker of reef wares Dirk, who showed us a novel new product which has been flying off his temporary shelves. Reef Glasses are essentially…

Sequential Hermaphrodites: Protandrous, Protogynous or serial bidirectional?

Things are rather peculiar in the realm of reef fish. Few phenomenons are clear cut in black and white. At a glance it’s as if the myriad of biological processes walk the grey zone, waiting for the deciding waves to push them…

Ogles’ new mesoscope gets a massive price cut down to $200!!

The Ogles Mesoscope is by and large, one of the most innovative and niche products ever conceived and created for the aquarium hobby. We were completely amazed when we began tinkering with the first model of the Mesoscope, and fall…