Please join us for a interesting discussion on coral coloration. This presentation will discuss various coral color classifications (clades), how light induces these colors, which light wavelengths are responsible, and how factors such as pH can cause color shifts. Stoked!!
Dana Riddle Bio (read the event post)
I’ve had a fascination with marine life since childhood and began keeping saltwater fish in 1965. I made the transition to reef aquaria when George Schmitt published his articles in Freshwater and Marine Aquariums in the 1980s. There wasn’t much information in those days and my success in maintaining live corals was limited. Information slowly surfaced but was mostly hype for ineffective products. Instead of buying more acrylic reactors for $400 a pop, I invested in a Li-Cor PAR meter in order to unlock some of the mysteries of lighting, and so it went. Today my small coral lab in Hawaii has over $100,000 of equipment, including an electronic water velocity meter, PAM fluorometers, fiber optic spectrometers and standard items usually found in a wet laboratory. Results of research conducted with this equipment has been published in Advanced Aquarist, Aquarium Frontiers, Coral Science, Koralle, Aquarium Fish, Reef Aquarium Annual, FAMA, SeaScope, Breeders’ Registry, MASNA newsletter, Marine Fish Monthly and others. I also wrote the book The Captive Reef in the mid-1990’s.
I have had the honor of making over 60 presentations at the Marine Aquarium Conference of North America (MACNA), the International Marine Aquarium Conference (IMAC), regional conferences and marine aquarium societies from New York’s Brooklyn Aquarium Society to Orange County’s Southern California Marine Aquarium Society. I was humbled when I received MASNA’s Aquarist of the Year in 2011 at the MACNA conference in Des Moines, Iowa.
Coral Coloration Talk
Many corals contain fluorescent proteins and/or non-fluorescent chromoproteins. As hobbyists, we are often challenged in maintaining these colors in our captive corals. Often, a coral commanding a premium price for its coloration will slowly fade to brown or shift from one fluorescent color to another.
This presentation will discuss various coral color classifications (clades), how light induces these colors, which light wavelengths are responsible, and how factors such as pH can cause color shifts.
Date/Time: August 11 at 1pm
Place: Chabot College Room 722
25555 Hesperian Boulevard Hayward, CA 94545