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• MACNA 2014 Adds Trio of Marine Scientists to Speaker Lineup
• Lionfish Shown to Tolerate Freshwater in School Science Project
• Tip of the Day – 6/19/2014

MACNA 2014 Adds Trio of Marine Scientists to Speaker Lineup Posted: 19 Jun 2014 09:00 AM PDT MACNA is always a gathering point for great minds of the marine aquarium world, with the usual all-star cast of guest speakers unleashing all sorts of knowledge on the wide-eyed audience. In that respect, MACNA 2014 looks to be no different. But where we normally see a guest speaker list that consists of well-known figureheads of the hobby mixed in with awesome local talent or folks that aren’t so well know but are doing phenomenal work, this year looks to change things up a little. MACNA 2014 will add three marine scientists to the mix whose disciplines overlap in various ways with the hobby. A full description of each speech is outlined below in MACNA’s press release, but to summarize, Dr. Todd LaJeunesse will focus his talk on coral-algae symbiosis, which we all know to be the relationship that corals develop with zooxanthellae algae. The second of the trio, Dr. Charles Mazel, will lecture about coral fluorescence and how it relates to the wavelengths of various light sources, but primarily LEDs. And lastly, Jamie Craggs, who is the Curator of Aquatics at the Horniman Museum and Zoo in London, will discuss coral spawning in captivity and how he has been able to get corals to spawn pretty much on command. Continue below for snippets of the press release. The MACNA 2014 committee is proud to announce an exceptional selection of pioneering academic and scientist speakers to enrich the lineup of presentations. MACNA is a conference created and produced by avid saltwater aquarium hobbyists, a fact which is well represented in our speaker lineup of many professional aquarists. However there is a huge pool of reef biology and ecology knowledge in the scientific community that we are excited to be tapping into for this year's conference. In addition to our exciting Keynote speaker Dr. Luiz Rocha, we are proud to announce three more academics from various fields of coral, reef and aquatic sciences. Dr. Todd LaJeunesse is one of the most pioneering researchers in the field of coral-algae symbiosis and his methods are used everyday around the world to characterize the different "species" of Symbiodinium known as 'Clades' and 'Sub-Clades'. Symbiotic corals are an ecosystem unto themselves and we aquarists can learn a great deal by understanding more about the different types of zooxanthellae, how they interact with our corals and the myriad ways that coral and reef health is closely tied to the community of Symbiodinium present within them. Dr. Charles Mazel is the founder and lead researcher of NightSea, a company which focuses on fluorescence viewing and imaging technology. Like Symbiodinium, there is a lot we can learn about corals from the fluorescence that our corals display. With the advent of more and specific LED colors in the progressive reef aquarium lighting space, it is now commonplace for reefers to discuss light colors in terms of specific wavelengths and peaks, all of which have corresponding fluorescence excitation characteristics. If you're a fan of multicolors LEDs to bring out the best color in your corals, you definitely wont want to miss this exciting presentation by Dr. Charles Mazel. If ground-breaking work with coral spawning is more your thing, then you're going to love the presentation by Jamie Craggs. Jamie is the Curator of Aquatics at the Horniman Museum and Zoo in London who made waves this year by spawning Acropora in an aquarium this year. Coral spawning is not that rare in small captive aquarium setups but where Jamie stands out is that he did it on purpose on the first try! By faithfully reproducing nearly all environmental parameters of natural reefs and their cycles in an aquarium environment, Jamie succeeded in spawning Acropora valida and even timing when they would spawn to within days. If you think "Limited Edition" corals are exciting, just you wait until we begin building on Jamie Cragg's work to spawn and rear truly unique new strains of corals that are not even found in the ocean.

Lionfish Shown to Tolerate Freshwater in School Science Project Posted: 19 Jun 2014 07:00 AM PDT The effects of the lionfish invasion currently ongoing in Florida and surrounding waters look worse and worse each day, as research continuously reveals just how much damage the fish are causing on native fish populations. But the story has taken a new plot twist, as a child’s science fair project and subsequent scientific articles have revealed that the lionfish, much like bull sharks, can tolerate freshwater environments giving them a whole new environment to invade. In a recent Sun Sentinel article, a 12-year old student from Jupiter, Florida, showed that lionfish could survive in water with salt concentrations as low as 6 parts per thousand. Normal ocean salinity is around 35ppt, though inshore waters tend to fluctuate with rainfall and other factors. Lauren Arrington’s experiment included five aquariums which had their salinities slowly dropped while monitoring the condition of the resident fish. A sixth aquarium was left at normal salinity as a control tank. Over a two week period, the salinity of each tank was taken down to 6ppt, which is where the experiment was stopped because Lauren didn’t want the fish to die, which would disqualify her from the science fair competition. At 6ppt, the seemed to be completely unaffected. Lauren went on to win third place in the zoology division of the Palm Beach County regional science and engineering fair, but her project landed her a mention on a scientific paper, something we doubt the first and second place winners ever got. Craig Layman, an ecology professor at North Carolina State University, built off of Lauren’s project by conducting their own study, which was published this year in the Environmental Biology of Fishes. Layman and his team of students took the salinity all the way down to zero, revealing that lionfish could tolerate a minimum salinity of 5ppt and even withstand influxes of freshwater. So how does this add to the lionfish’s devastating effect? Well, a lot of marine fish use freshwater systems as nurseries for their young. They travel up into rivers and estuaries to lay eggs, and the juvenile fish live in these protected areas until they are big and mature enough to fend for themselves. With the lionfish present, however, these juvenile fish are likely to get annihilated, further affecting native fish species in a big way.

Tip of the Day – 6/19/2014 Posted: 19 Jun 2014 06:00 AM PDT When live rock avalanches occur in your aquarium, there’s no need to panic, but there is certainly an immediate need to act. As the rocks shift, either due to natural settling, a fish that burrows, or some other reason, they can come tumbling down on each other in a hurry. Obviously, anything in the rock’s path will get crushed in the process, and this could be fish, corals, or invertebrates. For damaged coral, the remedy is to remove the fallen rock and try to put things back the way they were and hope the coral heals itself. For fish and inverts, it’s a different story as a falling rock could kill them instantly. Sometimes, however, the falling rocks can simply trap the aquarium livestock, which is why it is important to act fast once the landslide has been discovered.

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