Here is a really awesome spot that turns a lot of the usual ideas we have about reefs on their heads. The current is always really low and the water is 30-31 degrees. There is a ton of macroalgae around, mostly Caulerpa, Halimeda and Padina. It's a completely mixed reef, there are softies on top of LPS on top of SPS. The most common SPS were Seriatopora and Stylophora, so it seems they prefer low current. Oddly enough, there were quite a few huge thickets of Acropora too, so it seems some species of Acropora also like low flow.
There were tons of species here that I didn't see anywhere else, or at least not in numbers. It's the only habitat where I saw copperbands. It's the only place where Euphyllia and bubble coral was really common. Just try counting the number of coral species on these next few videos...it's an unbelievably diverse habitat. I think we are often seriously overestimating how much flow we need for the bulk of coral species we keep...
The black and white fish here is quite a rare species that I don't think has ever been available in the trade. Meiacanthus crinitus, the hairytail fangblenny. There were a lot of them in these calm channels:
There were tons of species here that I didn't see anywhere else, or at least not in numbers. It's the only habitat where I saw copperbands. It's the only place where Euphyllia and bubble coral was really common. Just try counting the number of coral species on these next few videos...it's an unbelievably diverse habitat. I think we are often seriously overestimating how much flow we need for the bulk of coral species we keep...
The black and white fish here is quite a rare species that I don't think has ever been available in the trade. Meiacanthus crinitus, the hairytail fangblenny. There were a lot of them in these calm channels:
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