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Sunday, September 09, 2007

Listen or Download Episode 7

Episode 7 – September 9, 2007

Listener feedback

Reef News

Thefts in the UK
http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/pages/item.php?news=1264

Tank of the Podcast

Phil Jones 180 Gallon

Fish of the Podcast

Thanks to www.reef-life.com for allowing us to use the picture.

Bi-color parrotfish
http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?cls=16&cat=1852&articleid=1750

Coral of the Podcast

Thanks to www.reef-life.com for allowing us to use the picture.

Beginner’s Corner

Maintaining the Temperature in your tank.

Advanced Reefkeeping

ATO Update

Saturday, August 18, 2007

Trying to Save the Coral Reefs - TIME

Editors Note: The dying coral reef is becoming more and more mainstream news. Today it is in Time.

Near the close of the 1960s, a squadron of young scuba divers headed out into the warm waters of the South Pacific, tanks of air strapped to their backs and syringes at the ready. Their mission, one lethal injection at a time, was to put a stop to an outbreak of crown-of-thorns starfish, a voracious predator of fragile tropical coral reefs. Those early efforts — along with a big printing of "Save the Barrier Reef" bumper stickers — helped establish what has since been considered one of the world's best-protected coral reefs.

Read Full Article: Trying to Save the Coral Reefs - TIME

Friday, August 17, 2007

Animal of the Day - Crater Coral

Photograph	Thanks to That Fish Place for allowing us to use the photo - Click here to see on their site
Common Name	Crater Coral, Brain Coral
Scientific Name	Leptastrea Sp.
Range	Indo-Pacific
Difficulty of care	Moderate
Aggressive	No
Flow & Lighting	Medium to High
General Info	Less than most other Favidae found in the industry. Similar care to other Favidae.
References	aims
Personal Experience?	Do you have personal experience with this fish? If so leave a voicemail (+1-908-998-2549) or email (feedback@120gallons.com) with what you have learned and share your knowledge with others.

Science Friday: News Brief - Shrinking Coral

Seventy-five percent of all reef-building corals live in the Indo-Pacific Ocean, which spans roughly from west Indonesia to the Hawaiian Islands, and includes the Great Barrier Reef off of Australia. A recent study in PLoS ONE found that the coral cover in the Indo-Pacific, which includes some of the most-intensely managed and protected coral reefs, has dropped by more than twenty percent in the last few decades.
John Bruno and Elizabeth Selig, of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, analyzed thousands of surveys tracking the changes in living coral on the sea floor. “It’s a really key indicator of reef health because the corals are essential for all the other inhabitants of reefs—the fish and invertebrates. They rely on corals just the way birds and insects rely on trees in a forest,” says Bruno, a marine ecologist in the department of marine sciences.
The data indicates that fifty years ago living coral covered, on average, fifty to sixty percent of the sea floor in the Indo-Pacific. “But frankly it’s impossible to know precisely what it was. So the fifty to sixty percent is our best estimate based on talking with lots of local Indo-Pacific reef experts and based on our earliest studies from the early- to mid-1960s.” The researchers found that across the Indo-Pacific coral cover dropped from around fifty percent to 23 percent in the last thirty years. “What that means is that we’ve lost more than half the world’s reef-building corals just in the last couple of decades,” Bruno explains.

Read Full Article: Science Friday: News Brief - Shrinking Coral

Reef education on Little Cayman

Thanks to ongoing support from individual donors and corporate sponsors, Central Caribbean Marine Institute (CCMI) continues to promote long-term coral reef conservation by teaching young people about Cayman’s marine environment and involving them in important research.
For college students, CCMI has been a leader in undergraduate and graduate level courses and offers accredited classes throughout the year at the Little Cayman Research Centre (LCRC), which is a project of this non-profit organization.
Most recently, students from a number of universities in the US completed a month-long college-accredited course on 9 August. The course was offered by CCMI through Rutgers University’s Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences and Study Abroad Office.
It was conducted by Assistant Professor of Marine Biology, Dr Vania Coelho, and Associate Professor of Oceanography, Dr Carrie Manfrino, who is also President of CCMI.
Eleven college students from all over the US (Virginia Tech, UC Santa Barbara, University of Notre Dame, Lafayette College, and Rutgers University) enrolled in the coral reef research course.
The 2007 program included work on two primary ongoing research projects at the LCRC, namely, Long-Term Assessment and Monitoring Program (LAMP) and Coral Disease Management Program.
During the course, students learned field and laboratory methods of conducting scientific research, and from this, they will publish several abstracts that will be presented as posters at the 11th International Coral Reef Symposium in Florida on 7 through 11 July 2008. This is an event that takes place
...

Read Full Article: Reef education on Little Cayman

The VorTech Wireless Wave Driver will upgrade any MP40 model pump feature wireless wave simulations. It only requires that four screws be removed from the lid of the MP40 driver box, and the motor’s plug gently removed and plugged into the new Wireless Wave Driver board. Lastly, the lid is gently snapped in place and your pump is now wave controllable. Multiple pumps on Wireless Wave Drivers can interact with one another to provide random and pulsing wave modes.

Wave Modes
Reef Crest Random Mode- Set the pump to the maximum desired speed and the VorTech Wireless Wave Driver automatically randomizes the flow throughout your tank. The pump will rapidly vary from one speed to another to simulate the high-energy conditions of a natural reef crest environment.

Lagoonal Random Mode

Set the pump to the maximum desired speed and the VorTech Wireless Wave Driver automatically randomizes the flow throughout your tank. The pump will vary slowly from one speed to another to simulate a calmer, lagoonal reef environment.

Pulse Mode

When entered into pulse mode, you will be able to pulse your VorTech pump at various frequencies to create standing surface and sub-surface waves within your aquarium. You can adjust both the maximum pulse speed and frequency.

Sync Mode

When entered into Sync Mode, your VorTech will automatically sync with the other pumps in your aquarium. Sync Mode can be used to sync in either random modes or in pulse mode. When syncing two pumps in Pulse Mode, the pumps can be placed on the same side of the aquarium to create large standing waves in your tank.

Anti-Sync Mode

When entered into Anti-Sync Mode, pumps will pulse in an inverse timing cycle to a master pump. Every time the master pump is at the maximum speed of cycle, the pumps entered into Anti-Sync Mode will be at the minimum speed of the cycle, and vice-versa. Place these pumps on the opposite side of the tank as a master pump to create tidal currents within your aquarium.

Feed Mode
With the touch of a button, the VorTech enters into feed mode and all pumps shut down for 10 minutes to allow you to feed your aquarium.