At the Reefing USA show in STL, I encountered some unique specimens that caught my eye at Gabe Pommier’s booth, Oceanic Gardens. He brought two varieties of Stereonephthya, which before the show I had only seen online. Many of you…
What kind of Saltwater Tank do you want?
Up until this point just about everything that has been done in preparation of setting up a new tank is pretty much the same. A tank, stand, skimmer, lights, etc are all going to be used regardless of what you…
When Jake went to Sanjay’s house
This is one of the great Reef Builders videos and for several reasons. One, it shows off Jake in his prime, secondly he was with his friend Sanjay Joshi at his house, and third, the video is about Sanjay’s super…
Observations on a “new” soft coral in the hobby, Paraminabea rubeusa, by Julian Sprung
After so many years enjoying and looking forward to the coral feature articles that Jake Adams wrote and Vincent Chalias still writes for Reef Builders, I came across a coral that inspired me to want to compose a gushing, over…
The New Octocorallia: Malacalcyonacea Part 1
In our previous review of octocoral classification, we saw that anywhere from 3–8 orders have traditionally been used to organize this group’s bewildering biodiversity, based on morphological assumptions of increasing complexity within the evolutionary history of these corals. It was…
Jasmine Coral is a great soft coral for beginners
If you want a super easy soft coral for a low-maintenance tank, a nano, or a beginner tank, then look no further than the Jasmine Coral, Knopia octocontacanalis. The Jasmine is the only member of the genus Knopia and was…
10 new soft corals described from New Zealand
Ten new species of soft coral have been discovered in New Zealand by a marine biologist. The new species were found by Gustav Kessel among tens of thousands of preserved specimens housed at the NIWA Invertebrate Collection in Wellington, the…
Erythropodium taoyuanensis, a New Soft Coral Discovered in Taiwan
Erythropodium taoyuanensis is a new species of encrusting octocoral that was discovered from algal bed of Taiwan in the west Pacific Ocean. The newly described octocoral from Taiwan is not much a looker as far as corals go being what…
Sympodium Grows by a Whopping Seven New Species
The vast majority of our generic coral ‘bandwidth’ is focused at the Scleractinian stony corals and to a lesser degree at corallimorphs and zoanthids with very little fanfare for too much else. But as we’ve said repeatedly every time we…
Serene ‘Softscape’ Reef Aquarium by Aquarium Design Group
Aquascaping is a term that gets thrown around all sides of the aquarium ‘chloride divide’ but when it comes to putting the principles into practice, coral reefers can hardly touch the execution and presentation of nature aquarium gardeners. Part of…
