According to Tech Crunch, Amazon is jumping into the pet industry with a website dedicated to cats, dogs, and yes, even fish. The online retail giant recently went live with the beta version of their pet friendly shopping site Wag.com, sporting products from a variety of aquatic categories. The section of the site dedicated to fish is brightly colored and seemingly aimed at the saltwater sect of the hobby, but don’t get your hopes up. The site is vastly incomplete, having probably less than 100 aquatic products from only a handful of brands. I was half expecting to see live fish on the site, seeing as how they have a “New Fish” section, but it only leads to more aquarium products. Despite initial shortcomings, don’t count Wag.com out yet because it is still so new. Who knows what the future has for the site and perhaps it will become populated by the aquarium equipment we’ve all come to know and love.

Buying corals online can be tricky because pictures of corals can be very deceiving. It is now common practice to edit photos to make the corals more appealing, and it is very difficult to distinguish true colors from colors that have been tampered with. So trust online stores that openly state what kind of bulbs the corals were shot under, as well as places with great feedback. Avoid rare and expensive corals unless they come from a trusted source. If possible look for an encrusting base to ensure you’re getting a healthy specimen and not a chop-shop frag.

In early February we broke news that Aquarium Specialty, an online aquarium equipment retailer frequented by a countless number of aquarium hobbyists, was getting a site revamp. At the time, we were told the release of the new site was imminent, but a few bumps in the road and the desire for a perfect finished product prevented the new site from going live as scheduled. But after an additional month of waiting, the new Aquarium Specialty is finally online. Along with all of the aesthetic differences and a ton of new products being added to the site, several new features have been incorporated. Some of these new features include customer product reviews, “tell a friend”, price alerts, better search windows, compare products, videos of products, “how to” videos, and even a wish list. There are even more new features in the pipeline for later release, but those are still being worked on at the moment.

After several years of operating on the same design, Aquarium Specialty, an online vendor of a seemingly unlimited amount of aquarium equipment, is getting a site revamp. This new website, which has taken over a year to develop, isn’t completely different aesthetically, but it does have more functionality and finally some larger images! I’ve always complained to Scott, the owner, about the size of the images on the Aquarium Specialty site, but it was an issue he was already aware of and is now getting fixed thankfully.

Several new features will slowly find their way onto the redesigned site. I haven’t been told exactly what those are, and I couldn’t even begin to guess what they may be because I never had issues browsing their online store or placing orders. But we’ll see where the new features will take the site. We’ve also been told that the store will be expanding its offering of aquarium equipment. Aquarium Specialty already offers products from a ton of different aquarium product manufacturers and they routinely update the products they offer, so I’m not sure specifically what products new will be offered. But I’ve been told the total amount of products offered will increase dramatically.

The new website is scheduled to go live later today, barring any technical hiccups of course.

Update: The site release has been pushed back a couple of days to tweak a couple of things.

White Cap Goby (Lotilia graciliosa)

© 2010 Foster & Smith, Inc. Reprinted as a courtesy and with permission from http://www.LiveAquaria.com

If you’re looking for the centerpiece fish for your nano aquarium, look no further. The White Cap Goby (Lotilia graciliosa) has shown up on US soil once again, and LiveAquaria has one. This tiny goby will fetch a hefty price tag, $900 to be exact. The whitecap goby is very shy and will take some time to get adapted to your aquarium. To ease it into aquarium life, you can add a pistol shrimp. The goby should, at some point, form a symbiotic relationship with the shrimp, which might relieve some of the initial stress.

The white cap goby comes from a variety of areas, including Fiji, the Marshall Islands, Vanuatu to name a few. It can be found hovering over carbonate-based substrates, often sharing a burrow with a pistol shrimp. The max size of the goby is approximately 2″, or just short of that. This tiny fish is very beautiful and rare, hence its steep price tag. They show up in the US a couple of times per year at the most, so if you see one and have the money to spare, jump on it right away.

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© 2010 Drs. Foster and Smith, Inc.
Reprinted as a courtesy and with permission from
DrsFosterSmith.com (http://www.DrsFosterSmith.com)
Free pet supply catalog: 1-800-323-4208

Happy Father’s Day from AquaNerd

Fathers are the unsung heroes of our everyday lives. They work hard to pay the bills and put food on all of our tables. So, show your father the appreciation he deserves. Tell him that he’s special and has been a great influence on your life. A Hallmark card and gift card to any of the home improvement stores will help too. Or if your dad is an aquarium nerd like all of us, a gift card to his favorite LFS will work too.

Interzoo, the largest pet expo in the world, officially starts today! This year’s event, which is the 31st annual Interzoo, will be held in Nurnburg, Germany for the next three days. The event will be a gathering place for experts from all across the pet industry, including experts in aquariums, terrariums, horses, cats and dogs, insects, and everything under the sun. Germany is, what many consider, the leader in aquarium tech and this event is sure to not disappoint the aquatic enthusiast. We can’t attend the event, but we will do our best to get some product news to you…including updates on the Tunze Masterstream pumps and the new Red Sea Max 500.

Lightning Maroon Clownfish on Blue Zoo

As promised, we have uncovered the breeder that was hand selected by Blue Zoo Aquatics to breed the massively popular and wildly patterned PNG Lightning Maroon Clownfish. According to Blue Zoo, multiple bids started coming in for this fish instantly. Some of the bids even exceeded $5000. But Blue Zoo didn’t cater to the highest dollar amount. Instead, they did the smart thing and sought to sell it to someone who could properly care for and breed this magnificent fish. They had a very short list of potential candidates, and in the end, MASNA award winning marine fish breeder Matt Perdersen was selected to breed the PNG Lightning Clown.

Lightning Maroon Clownfish

Photo by Ret Talbot

Matt Pederson earned his fish breeding respect by sucessfully breeding harlequin filefish, a notoriously difficult fish to keep alive and well fed. But there was a slight bump in the road where Matt is concerned…he doesn’t like designer clownfish. He apparently stands against man-made hybridization that has recently popped up in this hobby over the last few years. Luckily for those seeking this clownfish in mass numbers, the PNG Lightning clown is 100% natural, so Matt won’t have to abandone any of his principals.

Two days ago, the PNG lightning maroon clownfish was shipped to Matt Pedersen, along with a large femail clownfish collected from the same reef. Blue Zoo is also planning to obtain at least two more juveniles from the same PNG reef in the event that the initial pairing is unsuccessful. I’m not sure if these two juveniles will also be Lightning Maroon Clowns, or just normal looking clowns.

Lightning Maroon Clownfish on Blue Zoo

Just recently, we wrote about the super rare Lightning Maroon Clownfish selling for $2500 on Blue Zoo Aquatics. Well, it turns out that the incredible fish wasn’t sold to your average aquarium keeper with a giant wad of money. According to a Twitter message I received from Nano Reef Blog and an update by Reef Builders, this amazing clownfish has gone to an accomplished fish breeder. Nobody knows who this breeder is, but hopefully this individual can breed the Lightning Maroon Clown with other Maroon Clowns and successfully raise offspring that have this unique pattern. The price on this fish will always be high, but hopefully enough of them will be raised to bring the price down some.

Blue Hurricane Chalice

Not sure how I skipped last week’s Picture of the Week, but here it is…better late than never.

Here is a gorgeous Blue Hurricane Chalice from our friends at ReefExotic. This coral is quite striking, as it has a very rich light blue with a vibrant pink center…a color combination not often seen in the aquarium trade.