nervous system’s reef

I’ve always been fascinated by coral. At first, for the otherworldly environments they create on the ocean floor. And later, for a whole range of reasons including their fascinating biological relationship with photosynthesizing algal symbionts, their geologically significant reef building biomineralization activity, and bizarre, modular growth habits.

For years I’ve been going to public aquariums and photographing corals through the glass. But, I figured that having my own aquarium would make it possible for me to carefully observe the growth processes of different species. Three weeks ago I setup my first saltwater aquarium. It sits at the entrance to the Nervous System office. And currently houses 6 coral colonies, 4 snails, and 2 sexy shrimp (yes that is actually the common name of this species).

Today I introduce you to two of the coral colonies living in our tank via short videos I shot last night. Each was shot in real time with a macro lens.

Next week I’ll introduce you to some of the other inhabitants. I also hope to do some projects in the coming year centered around our tank’s inhabitants as they grow.

For all you aquarium nerds out there here are the tank specs: Elos Mini 20 gallon cube aquarium with Elos Sump, Elos PS200 Needlewheel Skimmer, Elos Osmocontroller 2 auto top off, Ecoxotic 18” Panorama Pro LED Fixture, Vortech MP10 powerhead.

a visit to the New England Aquarium

On Sunday, we visited the New England Aquarium in Boston, one of my favorite places in the city.  Here are some photos I took there.   Coral, bubble tip anemone, an urchin and a cuttlefish.

Zoanthus sociatus

I went into Boston this week and spent an afternoon soaking up inspiration at the New England Aquarium.  As usual, I spent some time transfixed at the live coral display.  I particularly love these guys, who are Zoanthus sociatus or Button Polyps.  They mostly reproduce by budding asexually and thus form dense colonial mats.  Wikipedia tells me that since they are a member of Hexacorallia each polyp should have tentacles in multiples of six, but I’m too lazy to count.

Aquarium of the Pacific

We went to the Aquarium of the Pacific on Saturday. It was really exciting and full of inspirational stuff. Jessica took over 4GB of pictures.

While the aquarium itself is a little disorganized and not much to speak of architecturely, the individual exhibits were surprisingly thorough and engaging. They have all the standard aquarium fair such as sharks and giant sea bass, but the really outstanding stuff was their collections of jellyfish, corals, and sea horses.

They had five different types of jellyfish just undulating around. I think I could watch them all day. I like how every single part of the organism is visible. They kind of remind me of Sodaplay.

We also found these nice blue tunicates that grow in interesting partially interlocking aggregations; though there is only one piece pictured above, we saw many formally diverse clusters. These eels that stick their heads out of the sand are really cute.

We had several opportunities to inspect the bottoms of starfish that were stuck to various tanks throughout the aquarium. Jessica found them fascinating, but I think they are a little gross. Though I must admit that the textures and colors discovered by Jessica are really interesting.

And of course we loved the corals.