The Queen of the Tank

On St Thomas, my friends and I visited a place called Coral World. We were originally apprehensive because the place had gotten some poor reviews online, and the weather report forecast said it would rain. However, everything turned out great! We loved the park, even though it was small. The exhibits were beautiful and the animals all seemed to be healthy and happy. In addition, some random guy at the front gave us coupons for a discount, it did not rain all day, and the animal handlers were really friendly and informative. Our original plan was to spend half the day there and half the day snorkeling at Coki Beach, but since Coral World exceeded expectations, we ended up staying until closing time.

Coral World has a wonderful tank that is open to the air and naturally filtered by the ocean - all the dirty water is pumped out and replaced with saltwater straight from the ocean. Not only does this keep particulate-feeders happy and fed, but it also sweeps spawn and eggs out to sea, where they can grow up wild and not clutter up the aquarium. It is important for the aquarium to be open to the sky since many reef animals' breeding timelines are dictated by the cycles of the moon.

This is a queen triggerfish. It is one of several triggerfish that live in the aforementioned tank. However, most of the other triggerfish in the tank were more nondescript ocean triggerfish, which are all grey.

More queen triggerfish:


Queen triggerfish
Coral World, St Thomas USVI

I've entered this in *dsoden's [link] (Zoo Photographers Contest)