An ode to purple Montipora digitata in the aquarium, and in nature

Purple Montipora digitata is hands down, one of the most beautiful and colorful small polyp stony corals available for aquariums, bar none. There, we’ve said it, professed our love for a coral that no matter how many times you’ve seen…

The Fragging Phenomenon Part Deux

In 1992, I wrote my first article on the fragmenting of corals, fragging for short. At that time fragging corals was primarily done on soft corals and was done more out of the necessity to preserve the corals we had,…

Massive migrating school of surgeonfish discovered in the Philippines

Two weeks ago, we were in the Philippines scouting for new and exciting corals to grow at the RVS 4-star Mariculture facility. While diving certain areas which have perhaps never been seen by humans using SCUBA equipment, we stumbled upon…

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…

What traits make a great reefer?

While sitting around with Julian, Jake and Sanjay, an interesting discussion developed as to what traits make a great reefer.  It was a lively debate as each of us had our own ideas of what traits really differentiate great reefers…

The Reefer’s Code formally explained by Mike Paletta

The following article is a contribution from Mike Paletta to bring attention to an unspoken yet very important rule of reefing and sharing corals among friends, the Reefers Code. I was lucky this year to be invited to give a talk…

USFWS Los Angeles: It is now illegal to import frogspawn & certain deepwater acro species

Update:  9/16/14 4:15PM CT Waiting on a call back from the Office of External Affairs regarding the validity of it being an honest mistake. Update 2: USFWS Los Angeles: We are now advising the trade of coming ESA listings We…

Rare Acropora robusta sighted in extreme flow environment

Acropora robusta is an interesting, thick branching staghorn coral which also happens to grow crazy fast in a high energy reef tank, especially when it is provided with “maximal” speeds for an aquarium. Often confused for Acropora abrotanoides, the main feature which…

The glorious colony shape of Acropora plumosa

Another day brings another interesting writeup on a notable stony coral we encountered on the Fluval Sea Flores Expedition. Like any good card-carrying Acropora lover we have perused all the pages of Corals of the World and distinctive species like Acropora pichoni…

Another PNG program looks to establish sustainable fisheries

Clownfish breeding is big business here in the US, however in areas like Papua New Guinea where harvesting from the reef itself is the norm, it is an entirely new ballgame. A recent project between Australian and Papua New Guinea…