An internet buddy got a great video of a crab hanging out on the beach. At first curious, he turns surly around the 1:50 mark and kicks sand into the camera. This sort of behavior should be familiar to most aquarium hobbyists.
The less informed may be inclined to think of this as an April Fools joke, but you can in fact train fish to perform daring stunts such as wriggling through a soft rubber hoop. I got my dad the official Fish Training Kit thinking it would make for a good joke, but as the video below shows, fish training is in fact serious business:
The trainer and her star lumpfish (Cyclopteridae one of my favorite cold water species!) are native to the New England Aquarium, and I found this lovely post not from their irregular and uninformative member's newsletter, but via the excellent Zooilogix blog.
I've never really tried out the video function on my camera, and that is reprehensible. So here is a quick shot of Boris and a few of his friends, partying it up as is their custom.
I would like to say that seeing an aquarium of this quality fills me with jealousy or a sense of failure regarding my own tank, but who has time for petty emotions when a video like this is playing. You could film a Planet Earth episode in this tank.
Live Aquaria is easily the best site for ordering aquatic life, with unmatched quality and shipping, as well as a stay-alive guarantee. I've been a big fan for quite some time, and the majority of my reef's inhabitants originated from them.
They've just added an RSS feed for their Diver's Den, which provides what-you-see-is-what-you-get specimens on a first come, first serve basis. The feed should let you keep tabs on their stock without having to remember to check the site.
Now I just need to get them signed up on Brightcove for all their videos.
Update: The only downside is that unlike browsing the actual site, with the RSS feed you get a view into things that have already sold! So waking up this morning, I discovered I was too late to get in on these beautiful Montipora color variations! So sad.
I've started reading yet another (RSS is a wonderful technology) online aquarium magazine, www.advancedaquarist.com. Informative and well researched articles from smart people is a great counterpoint to some of the things you read on internet forums.
Being a gadget lover, I'm always drawn to posts about reef keeping technology. The controllable Vortech pump should be a familiar item to anyone involved in keeping coral, but unless you've seen one in person its hard to understand just how powerful the pump is, and how minutely the controller allows you to tinker with water flow. Check out this article about defining waves in general, and making them with the Vortech.
Its always fun when your professional life intersects with your hobby. Working for an online video service, the potential for this is quite high due to the number and variety of video publishers we work with. Blenny Lips has always been one of our favorite small video publishers, publishing great scuba shots from Bonaire:
