Author of the Hiro Hattori (Shinobi) mysteries
When I talk with people about writing blogs (either regular blogs or periodic guest blogs) one of the most frequent questions I hear is “where do you find good copyright-released images for your posts?” In my case, the answer is always: on my computer and my phone. And, in the case of the squid chips pictured above, in the local Tokyo 7-11 . . . but I digress.
Read moreLast 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
Read moreMost corals live in colonies. In some species, the individual animals conjoin themselves in a single mass: While others live as collections of separate polyps joined at the bases. Palythoas (like the coral pictured above) and zoanthid species are among the types that live as separate, conjoined polyps. The colonies normally spread by forming new polyps around the outside edges of the existing colony mass. The colony gets larger and wider over time, until the polyps form a bushy-looking cluster like the brown and teal ones in the photo. But not always. Like many other coral species, a palythoa polyp
Read moreLast month I started a new feature: – the Month in Review, Reef Edition. And so, with no further ado, let’s take a look at what happened in April, 2013: The best shot of the month goes to Cyg & Ceti: a mid-water clip from their mating dance: Elsewhere on the reef last month: Lots of algae meant a need for additions to the clean-up crew. This time, that meant large turbo snails and also nassarius snails, which spend most of their time burrowed in the sand and emerge at feeding time to clean up the aquarium floor. (They’re fully
Read moreI recently acquired two dozen bumblebee snails (Pusiostoma mendicaria) to supplement my reef tank’s “clean-up crew.” Bumblebee snails are native to the shallow, reef-filled waters of Fiji and other tropical islands. They’re small (about the size of a jelly belly) and considered “reef safe” because they don’t eat living corals or fish. Instead, these opportunistic omnivores feed mostly on detritus and “leftovers” (meaning uneaten fish food … or what it becomes a few hours later). Like most invertebrates, the bumblebees went through a 45-minute acclimatization drip before I introduced them to the tank. This ensured that their systems had time
Read moreInstead of a unified post this week, I thought I’d share a few of the very best moments from this week’s reefing: Cygnus perched in a sea fan: Wilson the tuxedo urchin “cleaning up” algae around the sun corals: Life with brittle stars means you never know where a set of wiggling legs might come from: And, last but not least, Ghillie the seahorse hanging out with Wilson and Phobos the cleaner shrimp: I’ll have another tank-related story post next week, but for today, I hope you enjoy the random moments! If you had to pick a “shot of the
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