Your Day Needs More Baby Seahorse – And Murder

I try to post aquarium photos every day on my Facebook feed, as well as on Twitter, and starting this year, I’m going to try to share them at least weekly on the blog as well. When I first started blogging, I shied away from posting photographs of my seahorses or the other inhabitants of my reef. I doubted anyone cared very much about fish, and I didn’t want to become the kind of blogger whose entries focused on cute pet photos and gushing about the personal topics no one wants to hear. Ironically, the reef inspires the opposite reaction. To my surprise,

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Reef Retrospective: August 2014

August was an interesting month on my little reef. I created “algae cages” to grow red macro-algae (think “seaweed”) for my abalone, Oscar. Oscar would ordinarily eat the entire plant at once, but the cages protect the plants while allowing Oscar to nibble on the parts that grow through the mesh. I acquired a new species of sea fan: …and lost a fish. Sadly, Tai the dragonet leaped from the tank and I didn’t learn about it until too late. (Stay tuned for an update on his replacement.) Ghillie continued his habit of offering lovely poses to photograph, and Ceti continued hunting for

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The Reef is a Different World at Night

Most people don’t spend very much time considering the coral reef at night. The daylight reef swarms with activity – fish and corals, along with other invertebrates of every shape and size. At night, the fish are mostly sleeping, but other creatures come out to play. One example: bristle worms. These stinging invertebrates hide in crevices during daylight hours, and emerge at night to clean detritus off the reef. The corals change by night as well. This green star polyp colony looks full and bushy by daylight…. … but those fuzzy polyps pull back into themselves almost completely within minutes after

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The Best Reef Photos From April, 2014

I’ve been a bit lax with my reef posts lately, in part because I’m scheduling the tours for my upcoming mystery, BLADE OF THE SAMURAI, which releases on July 15. I’ve come out of the weeds, however, and I’ll be back to regular posting as of this week. Since it’s the first week of a new month, today’s reef post offers “the best of” April 2014: We brought home a new dragonet (sometimes known as a “scooter blenny”), who’s doing well and already eating frozen mysis–in the wild, they live on live foods only, so making the transfer to frozen is

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A fishy fail – and win!

I was so busy preparing to leave for the Left Coast Crime conference in Monterey (I leave tomorrow) that I completely forgot to post an aquarium blog today. In semi-redemptive news, I went to the fish store to get the water I needed for a pre-conference water change (my husband will handle the feedings while I’m gone) and discovered the store had a lovely specimen of a rare and fragile species that doesn’t usually do well in reef tanks but for which my reef is unusually well-suited. A feather star. This is our new crimson feather star, who doesn’t yet have a

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Lessons Learned from The Reef: Defend Your Cave

Emperor Maximus Angryfish was the first finned resident of my little reef. From Day 1, he established himself as the king of all he surveyed. As time went on, and other inhabitants joined him, Max had to accept that his territory dwindled from “everything the light touches” to “this cave, this rock, this place that I call my own.” Max accepted this lesson with varying levels of grace, depending on the moment and the interloper in question. However, Max has gradually learned to co-exist with the other tank inhabitants, provided that they respect the proper boundaries.  Wherein lies a lesson

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Lessons Learned from a Facehugger

My little reef is home to a pair of porcelain crabs, a large female named Ripley and a much smaller male who goes by the name of Facehugger. We brought Facehugger home first, and it’s probably obvious how he acquired his name. When I saw the big female at the fish store, I knew I needed to bring her home, and her name seemed pretty obvious. Unfortunately, she’s taken it to heart. Ripley doesn’t like Facehugger much. They don’t exactly fight, but she’s quick to assert her dominance over him every time they meet. In a recent confrontation, Ripley tore

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The Curious Nature of Seahorses

After three years as a seahorse-keeper, I still never tire of watching these odd little creatures explore their environment.  Seahorses are curious creatures by nature, a fact that can get them in trouble on the reef. Like small children, they “explore” the world around them as much through touching and tasting as with their eyes. Everything is either grabbed: Or tasted … or both. Many times, I look over and see a seahorse with its snout pressed up against the rocks, examining something inside a hole. They love to feed on the little live gammarus (small crustaceans) that live in the

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January 2014 on the Reef

  This year, I’m trying to keep up with the monthly reef-retrospectives, where I share some of the best images from the month before. Here’s a little of what I saw in January: Ghillie and Ceti, the seahorses, sharing dinner: Some new purple mushrooms (settling in well – despite the adventurous hermit): Max. Being Max. Emo the clownfish, hiding in a cave: And, last but not least, Red Spot the fire shrimp enjoying a rare trip into the open: Which is your favorite? I can never decide.

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A Shiny New Yamaha for Christmas

Last week my husband accompanied me on my regular trip to the fish store. He likes to go from time to time, to look at the fish and the corals. A seahorse tank has strong restrictions on species compatability, so many lovely specimens will never come home with us–we have to enjoy them at the store. This trip, my husband saw a brilliant purple pseudochromis (sometimes also called a purple dottyback or a strawberry gramma) swimming around in the reef store’s tank. The fish’s brilliant color caught his eye – in part because he used to have a Yamaha FZR motorcycle

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