Recent content by Biogeek

Hi A. Iosue. Your question is one that we wondered about as well, which is why we did the comparison between the controlled lab experiments in both controlled lab conditions without any animals or perterbations, and under natural conditions with both natural infauna and reef organisms. We...

Chances are that your "orange linkia" is not a linckia at all (see my article on these guys in the archives here). In any case, these guys have a pretty low metabolism, and don't need to be fed as often as a fish or the like. Regardless, you can't force feed a sea star, so all you can do is...

I agree with Terry that water conditions and lighting will ultimately be the most important factors for keeping these guys healthy in the aquarium, but there is also good evidence that particulate food does indeed increase growth rate in SPS. So, if you're looking to feed them, rotifers are...

You can have it properly analyzed by a company such as Battelle Labs or Grace Analytical, or through a place like the Old Dominion University's Phytoplankton Analysis Laboratory or one of the numerous major academic phytoplankton culture centers. Otherwise, if you just want someone to look at...

Yes, you are right - they lay on their sides. I did have 'forward' and 'backward' in quotes originally, but it was apparently lost in one of the revisions and should have been left in. In any case, I didn't think it was critical to the meaning of the article to get into molluscan anatomy - if...

The best write-up for Limulus that I can think of off the top of my head is in Fosså & Nilsen's The Modern Coral Reef Aquarium, Volume 3 - you might want to see if you can track that down at one of your local shops. Rob

I agree with Greg, and do not usually quaratine my invertebrates, especially ones with a record of being difficult to acclimate. Very little is known about these stars, and to date there have been no scientific studies of their diet in the wild. The only report of their diet is from the...

I think that you're justified in tooting your own horn here, Charles ;) Charles is right that it is frequently overlooked, but Chapters 10 & 11 in D&S The Reef Aquarium Volume 2 is a great source of information about keeping host anemones, and I should have mentioned it the original post.... Rob

Most likely the problem is that you are not getting a healthy animal to start with, but even then, they can be nursed back to health if you know what you are doing. I suspect that the most common problem that people have with these animals is that most are not really reef creatures at all, and...

Mal, That animal is a polychaete worm, often referred to by the common name "bristleworm" although I don't really like that term because it means very different things to different people. Regardless, in general these animals are harmless or even beneficial scavengers in most reef tanks...

Eduardo, it is very hard to say what the tiny white spots that you see appearing on your star are from here. Hopefully it is not the result of dead tissue appearing from an osmotic shock, but the area that went from a while patch to "looking dissolved" sure sounds that way. Given that both of...

If your overall question is "is it worth it?" I would have to say sometimes. It really depends on what you are trying to accomplish by adding it. I think that a lot of people go completely overboard with the plankton feeding, and unless there is some organism in your tank that is likely to...

I wrote a sandbed series for FAMA a couple of years ago titled "Are plenums obsolete?" that has recently been put onto the web by the folks at SEABay (Part 1 and Part 2). In that article I try to explain a little bit of sediment ecology and why a DSB should actually outperform a plenum in...

Ashley, There is a lot of diversity among the sponges, and like any other group (such as cnidarians, echinoderms or fishes) you can't make generalizations based on one that will ever apply to all of them Asking about an "orange sponge" is sorta like asking about an "orange fish," you're not...

My FAMA series on deep sandbeds has just been put online by the folks at SEABay (Part 1, and Part 2), and Ron Shimek has a nice introduction to deep sandbeds here. There is also a lot of great information about deep sandbeds archived on this site if you're still looking for more information...