Articles

There are really two kinds of snorkeling that people do in the Keys. The most common is taking a charter boat out about 5-10 miles offshore to one of a dozen nice sections of the barrier reef that has large coral colonies and lots of tropical fish. These are very protected and the water varies from 5 to 30 feet deep at most sites. Typical charters will give you about 90 minutes in the water. Some do two sites and 45-60 minutes at each site. These are very interesting and what most people...

Hi everyone! Thank you for taking a look on the forum at the Adelson illusion (Adelson 1993) shown in Figure 1 (left)! It created some great discussion that caused me to redraft the entire follow-up article! Indeed, we did couch the question differently than Edward Adelson. We asked the following question: “Which square, A or B, do you think is receiving more light or more intensity?” We edited that question quickly--really to match the topic of the article. Which is--how do you know...

A shipwreck off of Honduras. This is a royalty-free image from Pixabay. Artificial reefs are something we hear about on a regular basis. There is a growing interest in creating artificial reefs for a few reasons: because of the destruction of natural reefs, which is hopefully slowing down, and because of the economic benefits of allowing a structure already in the ocean to remain there rather than having to remove it to dispose of it. There are companies that specialize in creating...

Seawitch submitted a new Article: Cartoon Caption Contest #3 IT'S THAT TIME AGAIN!!! Tomorrow is February 1, 2019. My, how time flies when you're having fun. Welcome to the R2R Cartoon Caption Contest #3. Put your thinking caps on, sharpen your pencils, and give us a caption for the cartoon below. Cartoon #3 This cartoon is by Laura Yang for Reef2Reef. ©2019, All Rights Reserved. HOW TO ENTER This contest will be conducted inside our forum, so you first have to register for our...

Simon Ellis (R2R member @ca1ore), a Connecticut reefer with 30 years of experience, is a frequent contributor to the Reef2Reef Articles Section. He recently wrote the article about building your own Algal Turf Scrubber (ATS), and the article about automatic water changes. He's the perfect candidate for our Profile of Reef Aquarist, and, as luck would have it, he's also a professional writer among other things. So, what he has to say is not only informative but beautifully written. I asked...

The class, Cephalopoda, falls under the phylum, Mollusca. While cephalopods are not commonly kept in home aquariums, they remain an extremely diverse and interesting group. Many of the cephalopods are very short-lived (octopus), many are very difficult to keep alive in captivity (squid), some have very special requirements (nautilus), many have venom, and the octopus has the added difficulty of even keeping it inside a tank. Let's take a brief look at this group, all of which are marine...

From time to time I like to reflect on what I’ve been through during my reefkeeping years. From almost day one of this marvelous hobby, I was told, “You have to have patience” or “If you don’t have patience then you might as well stop." This got me thinking as of late. A good friend of mine assured me that I don’t have patience, but I am the most persistent person he’s met. I didn’t know if I should take this as a compliment or a slap in the face? Let’s look at the definitions shall we...

Live rock. This photo is a royalty-free image courtesy of Adrianna Calvo from Pexels This is an article for beginners. Since I didn’t see a sticky or article on this topic, I decided to tackle it myself. There are lots of differing opinions on how to cure live rock, and I’m going to explore here as many as I can find. I will include in the body of the article some common questions. Where appropriate, I have included some comments from forum members noted in red. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This...