Fish o’ the day | Coral Beauty Angel

Posted by gerard on October 17, 2008 under Saltwater Fish | Be the First to Comment

The Twospined Angelfish, Dusky Angelfish, or Coral Beauty (Centropyge bispinosa), is an omnivorous marine angelfish. Some individuals have a dark purplish blue body with yellow to red stripes, and usually an electric blue rim; in others are orange stripes dominate, with the purple distributed in spots. Some bright orange forms are very similar in appearance to the golden angelfish, Centropyge aurantia.  The twospined angelfish is native to the Indo-Pacific where it lives in coral reefs and lagoons. It reaches a maximum length of 3 inches (8 cm). It eats algae.

When kept in an aquarium they are distributed throughout the tank. They prefer reef tanks over fish only tanks, but are suitable for both. This species does not seem to be suitable for beginners, as the difficulty is rated high.

Coral o’ the day | Zoanthids

Posted by gerard on October 2, 2008 under Reef Info | Be the First to Comment

Zoanthids are my first foray into soft coral.  I chose to start with them because they are very colorful and from what I hear, they are easy to take care of.  While I am still waiting for them to grow, they supposedly grow rather rapidly.

A couple things you are going to want to make sure of are:

1. That you have enough light in your aquarium.  If you have a nano aquarium and are running power compacts or metal halide’s you should be fine for these types of soft coral.  

2. They do require phytoplankton for food so you should make sure you have that on hand as well.  Usually you can buy that by the bottle at your local fish store.

3. Lastly you will want to check your iodine/iodide levels to make sure they are in safe ranges.  I use Seachem’s Reef Iodide which is a safer alternative to iodine.

Other than that so far things are going well.  My little frags are still going strong after 2 weeks.  I’ll keep you all posted.

Buy at saltwaterfish.com. 

Photo courtesy of saltwaterfish.com