Releasing Atoll in 2016
Today myself, Marcus Smith and Ryan Poolos of Frozen Fire Studios released Atoll to the masses.
Atoll began as a concept several years ago with my fascination with marine aquatics and ultimately coral. I researched, heavily, for several months before putting together my first saltwater tank and began putting fish, inverts and coral in. Being new to the hobby I had a lot of questions. I would find something moving/living in the tank and not know what it was. The only real solution, since I did not know many people in hobby was to google the description of what I was seeing or post in a forum a photograph and ask “What is this?”, “Can you ID this?” and “ID this coral”.
Was there any app for that?
Nope. I wanted to be able to view a library of coral, images and have data about how to grow and care for them in one place.
Enter Atoll
Since there wasn’t one, we made our own: Atoll, a living library of coral. Browse through beautiful coral images to find new ones that might fit well in your reef tank, or get information on coral you already own. Each coral page in the library has scientific info as well as important hobby information about what conditions are necessary to keep the coral healthy.
Atoll can help you identify photos of coral, or you can help others identify theirs. We wanted a place where people could help others identify corals in an interactive way. Once identified those corals could be used to help others identify coral while building a database of coral to view and to be used for future reference.
Where are we going from here?
Atoll isn’t finished. We have lots of big ideas to add over time and we’re sure the community will come up with even better ideas. We’ll be keeping an eye on expanding the dataset to perhaps include fish and invertebrates once we get a handle on Coral. And we love the idea of integrations with hardware and tank attributes. So over time, it’s easy to see more reef tank husbandry information and suggestions based on your favorite coral.
Thanks to the community!
We’d like to thank everyone who helped in the testing process and everyone who has provided valuable help and feedback! Atoll is now available in iTunes for download! We hope that you will all continue to give us feedback on ways to make Atoll even better.
Atoll is here!
