Jamie Posted December 20, 2007 Share Posted December 20, 2007 Alrighty folks, here are some pics of my recently built, approx 3.5 gallons (10x10x8), overflowing aquarium! But first, the specs Lighting: 18w 6500K CF Chiller: Pacific Coast Imports 1/10 hp Fish: 2 Catalina Gobies - Lythrypnus dalli Flow: Maxijet 1200 Inverts: Orange compund tunicate Aggregating Anemones - Anthopleura elegantissima Burrowing Anemones - Anthopleura artemisia Orange/white Anemones Black Turban snails - Tegula funebralis Dogwinkle Snail - Nucella sp. PICS: -Jamie ps: The water only flows out over the back edge. The front and sides are dry. pps: FTS soon. Link to comment
Hoobahans Posted December 20, 2007 Share Posted December 20, 2007 Awesome! Where do you get your livestock? I love coldwater. I am waiting for those FTS. Link to comment
HeyLookItsCaps Posted December 20, 2007 Share Posted December 20, 2007 FTS!!!!! i was wondering if you collect your own specimens or what as well Link to comment
Jamie Posted December 20, 2007 Author Share Posted December 20, 2007 Thanks! Everything except for the gobies has been collected from tidepools on the Oregon coast. Manzanita, Shortsands, Newport Bay, and Cape Perpetua are all places I've gotten things from. FTS! Link to comment
hceiv Posted December 21, 2007 Share Posted December 21, 2007 Fantastic! If you read Steve Weasts comments on maintaining a cold water aquarium, water quality and filtration are very important, even more so than reef aquariums. This is due to the lack of nitrifying bacteria in cold water systems, mainly found in live rock and sand which is absent in a coldwater set up. Have you had any issues with water quality and do you plan on adding a protein skimmer or other? Link to comment
lilredneckman Posted December 21, 2007 Share Posted December 21, 2007 I love that goby! tank looks great! Link to comment
Jamie Posted December 21, 2007 Author Share Posted December 21, 2007 Thanks everyone for all the positive feedback! Fantastic! If you read Steve Weasts comments on maintaining a cold water aquarium, water quality and filtration are very important, even more so than reef aquariums. This is due to the lack of nitrifying bacteria in cold water systems, mainly found in live rock and sand which is absent in a coldwater set up. Have you had any issues with water quality and do you plan on adding a protein skimmer or other? I have read pretty much everything Steve has written on coldwater aquaria. I currently am relying only on bacterial filtration, and this seems to be working. In cold water tanks, there is much more life actually suspended in the water column than in tropical tanks, and I'm worried about skimming it out. One of the main reasons that Steve uses heavy filtration, as you said, is the very small amount of live rock he uses. The native rock here is very dense, and weighs way more than the live rock we have in our tropical tanks. In a large tank the amount of rock needed to get enough bacteria would be impossibly heavy, it would just break the bottom of the tank. Because my tank is small, I can fit a lot more rock in witout having to worry about damaging the tank. I also have a pretty light bioload, and I spot feed ll the anemones, so there is not very much waste. I have thought of adding a skimmer, but everything seems to be working fine as it is, so for now I'll just let it be. -Jamie Link to comment
modularduck Posted December 21, 2007 Share Posted December 21, 2007 SWEET!!!! i just bought a new tank just for this purpose after talking with steve, and few others. I can't wait till the weather clears a bit and i can go to the coast on a few collecting trips! Ubercool Link to comment
Hoobahans Posted December 21, 2007 Share Posted December 21, 2007 Man, for my school I am going to have to set up a 230g and a 140g coldwater tank in the next few weeks. We have no money at all. Someone gave us 23 thousand and it was all blown on construction and the people who designed it knew nothing about keeping aquariums, so I have to blindly manage it on my own now... No skimmer and they are four feet deep so I can't even reach/see easily to the bottom to spot feed. I love how these tanks look though and I want to do something similar, albeit on a larger scale. If you could post whatever advice or experience you get from keeping this tank on the thread I would eat it up! Link to comment
snowlancer2720 Posted December 21, 2007 Share Posted December 21, 2007 nice job! real clean looking, GL with it! Link to comment
Jamie Posted December 21, 2007 Author Share Posted December 21, 2007 SWEET!!!! i just bought a new tank just for this purpose after talking with steve, and few others. I can't wait till the weather clears a bit and i can go to the coast on a few collecting trips! Ubercool It's going to be raining, but this weekend there are some really low tides (-1.9 ft). so... you should go tide pooling. I know I am. Actually they're right after dark, so if you go, make sure you bring a lantern. Here is a great website for getting tide tables: http://www.saltwatertides.com/dynamic.dir/oregonsites.html Normally I go around Manzanita because my family has a beach house there, but this weekend I'm hoping to go to Netarts Bay. It's the only full salt water (as in, never brackish) bay within reasonable driving distance. It's got these great eelgrass flats which happen to be home to one of my favorite fish, the Gunnel! If I'm lucky, I might get with one! Man, for my school I am going to have to set up a 230g and a 140g coldwater tank in the next few weeks. We have no money at all. Someone gave us 23 thousand and it was all blown on construction and the people who designed it knew nothing about keeping aquariums, so I have to blindly manage it on my own now... No skimmer and they are four feet deep so I can't even reach/see easily to the bottom to spot feed. I love how these tanks look though and I want to do something similar, albeit on a larger scale. If you could post whatever advice or experience you get from keeping this tank on the thread I would eat it up! Do you have lighting yet? If not, I would go with the cheapest possible, seeing as to how you're on a tight budget. Probably shoot for around 10000K, I have 6500K's and I think I'd like them a little more blue. Maybe go with a couple 150w on each one, that could be overkill, but I really like the macroalgaes that grow, they make it look more natural, and they seem to need a lot of light. Otherwise go with T-5 HO's, but I don't know if that would be much cheaper. Whatever you can afford. For substrate, do NOT use native sand. It is literally a cyano magnet. In my first few CW tanks I used sand and no matter what I did, I could not get rid of the cyano. I'm currently using large pebbles I found on the beach, and they're workin great. They also add a lot of surface area for bacteria to grow. I would suggest either something like that, or BB. For a chiller, something huge. I have a 1/10 HP chiller and it can't keep the temp lower than 63-64 during the day. Look into a commercial lobster tank type chiller - something that's made specifically for CW tanks. Ideally, the temperature should be between 55 and 62. You can try putting styrofoam on the bottom an side for insulation, if you're having temp problems. Livestock: Anything you can catch, really. Can you SCUBA dive? It's actually really hard to find good stuff in tidepools. One of the best places for getting animals I've found are the sides of docks. It's amazing how much stuff there is growing there, and you don't even have to get wet. There are a few animals i would caution against: Snailfish/Lumpsuckers: spend their entire lives hiding under rocks, trying not to be seen. Not the least bit entertaining. Also, the one snailfish I had would not take prepared food, so a warning there too. Nudibranchs: Most of these have very specialized diets, but some will scavenge. Even so, they are seasonal, with lifespans of 8 months to a year, and by the time they're large enough to find and catch, they don't have a lot of time left. Crabs: All CW crabs are evil. Large anemones (Urticina sp. , Antopleura xanthogrammica, Cribrinopsis Fernaldi) although beautiful, will eat your fish. Since you have two tanks, I would reccomend making one a cnidarian dedicated tank, and the other a fish/invert tank. Things that would be safe with fish are: gorgonians, soft corals, hard corals, small Anthopleura anemones (like mine), strawberry anemones, hydrocorals. There are some species commensal with CW anemones, noteably, the Candy Stripe Shrimp (see here: http://www.vibrantsea.net/candy3_hardy10.html) which could make for an interesting, and beautiful diplay. Some CW anemones are photosynthetic (individuals of most Anthopleura species) but even these require supplemental feedings at least every couple days. I personally spot feed my anemones every day with frozen mysis. I would certainly not reccommend feeding less than every other day. And the most important rule: if you ever find straw berry anemones. Send some of them to me. I'll probably get more to you later, but right now I need to go to bed! HTH -Jamie Link to comment
TJ_Burton Posted December 21, 2007 Share Posted December 21, 2007 This type of tank / method makes me wish I were coastal lol. Link to comment
Jamie Posted December 22, 2007 Author Share Posted December 22, 2007 Haha, yeah. Well, you could always move. And you live in Canada, too. The marine life in Canada is sooo much better than here. I'm currently at the beach, and this afternoon I'll be going down to Netarts. Hope I bring back some goodies! Link to comment
Jamie Posted December 23, 2007 Author Share Posted December 23, 2007 I'm back, and tide-pooling/eelgrass-flat searching went well. Unfortunately, no gunnels, but I found a few interesting things. victims include: -several zebra leafslugs (a type of sea hare I think) -many northern kelp crabs (Pugettia producta), ranging from the size of a nickel to a foot or so wide (I kept the smallest one) -hundreds of small, unidentified green shrimp Pics of it all when I get home! Apparently it's going to snow in the coast range tomorrow, so we might try to make it home before the storm. Otherwise you'll have to wait until the 24th. -Jamie Link to comment
StevieT Posted December 23, 2007 Share Posted December 23, 2007 very cool. What temps are you keeping this tank at? Link to comment
Jamie Posted December 23, 2007 Author Share Posted December 23, 2007 Thanks everyone for the kind responses! Adin - If you see anything you like, I'd love to trade for one of your waratah's . LG/Toomin - thanks! StevieT- between 61-64. once I get insulation for the pipes I should be able to keep it down closer to 60. thanks again! -Jamie Link to comment
Jamie Posted December 25, 2007 Author Share Posted December 25, 2007 I got a new camera for christmas! I'm still working out how to use it, but I managed to get an FTS with the new stuff from Netarts. Unfortunately, I can't find any of the sea hares. They were in the bucket before we left for home, but either the shrimp ate them, or they got washed out. I'm still keeping an eye out for them in the bucket, but I'm no longer very optimistic. I also brought way too many shrimp home, so if anyone needs a shrimp, let me know. Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays everyone! -Jamie Link to comment
Blaze Posted December 26, 2007 Share Posted December 26, 2007 1:that is a sick set up. 2:how did you make the cude? 3:im kinda in the dark/clueless on this one, but how did you make the over flow thing work out? (is it easy to make a cube?) Link to comment
Jamie Posted December 26, 2007 Author Share Posted December 26, 2007 Thanks Blaze, and to answer your question, it wasn't hard at all. The stand is just four pieces of wood glued together around a frame. The glass is plain old 8x10 glass from home depot. The back piece of glass I got out of a picture frame, and it is about an 1/8 inch shorter than the other pieces, that's why the water only flows out the back. There is a little 2.5 gallon sump beneath the tank; the water from the sump is pumped through the chiller and into the tank, then overflows out of the tank, and is channeled back into the sump. Not complicated at all. Link to comment
Jamie Posted December 26, 2007 Author Share Posted December 26, 2007 New fish pic using lnse extender: Link to comment
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