Hello fellow Steemians (I hope I'm getting this term correct!)
So I have known of this site and community for a bit over a year now although never took the dive in to see what there was to offer.
My experiences up until this point have been from a my cousin who seems to have a decent following here for his posts on "mushroom hunting" as the layperson may know it, although he doesn't actually eat anything, he just likes finding stuff an identifying it. In addition to this I have occasionally been diverted to a posting here from my browsing of the interwebz.
So why am I here now? Well I have been told I have a pretty unique and interesting hobby by many people who have tried pushing me towards sharing this experience with others and I guess I can say I was inspired by my cousins work here.
While I do hope to keep everyone interested and engaged in what I will be posting (hopefully picture intensive), I would like to forewarn you all that I am not the greatest writer and this journey may seem rather crude to those used to some of the eloquent postings I've seen here.
So to go a bit into myself and what exactly this hobby "reef aquarist" means... well basically just means I have an aquarium/fish tank in my house that contains a miniature ecosystem if you will... a replication of a natural reef contained within 5 panes of glass or in some cases injected mold plastics.
O right... Me. I got my first freshwater fish tank I would say around the age of 10, but the nature of unplanted freshwater tanks bored me, so by the age of 13 I had my first reef tank started. Now at the age of 27, I have 14 years of experience with it. I've kept almost every type of coral excluding non-photosynthetics, as well as many different varieties of invertebrates, and fish, and who knows how many billions of various microorganisms I can technically call my pets as well.
O and did I mention I just finished medical school and am applying for medical residency as well? O and for some reason I decided to turn this hobby into a mini business as well this past summer.
Yes, that escalated quickly, but I'm not here for that. I'm here to share the cool things about my hobby that I think many people can appreciate.
I know I have some pictures here somewhere... Lets see what I can find.
Below is a coral called a blue polyp monti cap. So all of those pretty little blue dots are called polyps and are actually individual mouths to grab tiny bits of food out of the water column for the coral to consume.
Below is another visually appealing one. These corals are called jawbreaker mushrooms. All of the ones in this picture (PLUS MORE!) came from the same 3 corals I purchased. They mostly reproduce asexually by a process called budding where they will stretch out their "foot" further and further away from their body until it tears off and becomes its own coral!
Not interested yet? How about this one! Below you can find an embryo from a blue/green reef chromis. The small school of these fish which I have in one of my tanks lays eggs every few weeks. These were pulled out of the nest at day 4 or so if I remember correctly to get a picture under a microscope, seems one of the 3 eggs shown wasn't fertilized properly. I also have a video showing a heart beating and the fish wiggling in the egg every so often, but not sure how to upload videos here if they are even supported in text posts like this.
Anyway, that's all I have for now. Hopefully you guys enjoy it! Let me know if you want to see more or if you would like to see me just pack up and leave, I will do that too.
Now to try figuring out this tagging system.... hmm.