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
Read morepipefish
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.
Read moreSeahorses and Pipes – Cousins of the Reef
Most people see pipefish as odd-looking, snake-like creatures with tiny mouths and wiggly bodies, but to most people’s eyes, the pipe hardly looks like much of a threat–especially to something as large as a seahorse. However, sometimes the greatest threat in mixing species doesn’t come from a physical attack. I’m a fan of pipefish, in all their forms. I kept a pair of brackish pipes for years, and when I set up the reef tank in December of 2010, I knew I wanted pipes. Unfortunately, pipefish aren’t normally good tank mates for seahorses. Seahorses and pipefish both belong to
Read more