Category Archives: critters

Lysmata wurdemanni

Posted on August 29, 2015 by andrew

After several failed attempts, I’ve just now succeeded in raising my first peppermint shrimp from egg to post-larva. I took a bunch of photos and videos, and they’re all terrible. This species has a reputation for being fairly easy to … Continue reading →

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Saigon Aquarium, Livebearers, Discus, misc. (5/5)

Posted on January 8, 2015 by andrew

How many guppies do they raise here? This many: There were nearly as many ponds devoted to other livebearers: platys, swordtails, mollys. In the case of the swordtails a single giant pond was subdivided with hanging nets. I’m not sure … Continue reading →

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Saigon Aquarium, Tetras (4/5)

Posted on January 7, 2015 by andrew

After a short bus trip down a very bumpy road (and past some cows, buffalo, and cornfields) we arrived at the main farm. The main farm is enormous (10 hectares, 24 acres) and runs alongside a canal that provides a … Continue reading →

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Saigon Aquarium, Plecos (3/5)

Posted on January 6, 2015 by andrew

This section of the farm consisted of many tarp-lined ponds full of cut lengths of pvc pipe. The pipe were, presumably, full of adult ancistrus (‘plecos’) of various kinds sitting on eggs, but no adults were visible through the glare. … Continue reading →

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Saigon Aquarium, Corydoras (2/5)

Posted on January 5, 2015 by andrew

Saigon Aquarium’s ‘small farm’ raises about 100,000 Corydoras catfish per year. Green, albino (both C. aeneus I presume), panda, and sterbai. There was a bit of a language gap between me and the tour guide (mostly due to my being … Continue reading →

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Saigon Aquarium (1/5)

Posted on January 4, 2015 by andrew

On a whim while on the train ride to Ho Chi Minh City I wrote to the ‘contact us’ address at Saigon Aquarium asking if I could visit their breeding facilities. Much to my surprise I got a speedy ‘yes’ … Continue reading →

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Boraras

Posted on October 24, 2014 by andrew

Recent reading about axlotls plunged me down a rabbit hole of developmental biology regarding the preservation of juvenile or larval traits into adulthood. The wiki page about this contains a lot of questionable claims about how this applies to human … Continue reading →

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Dragonfly

Posted on March 6, 2014 by andrew

These photos are framed so it looks like the paddies go on for ever. In reality this is just a little zone of rice fields surrounded on all sides by tourist businesses. I’m not sure if there are other areas … Continue reading →

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Nothing happened in the Ordovician

Posted on February 17, 2014 by andrew

Having spent my entire life living atop Ordovician fossil beds (and a fair bit of my childhood digging in them), this diagram is deeply disappointing. The story always seems to go “Cambrian Explosion! Yada yada yada… bony fishes in the … Continue reading →

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manta

Posted on January 26, 2014 by andrew

This, the world’s largest fish tank, was originally built for a whale shark.  The developers (under pressure from whale shark advocates, who apparently exist) eventually conceded that even this tank was a bit small for a 40′ long fish, so … Continue reading →

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