And while it may prove difficult at times to do in the "wild", fragging becomes easier after acclimating to life at home.
Some more than others.

Some expect it. Some demand it .

( just an observation mind you ).

You won't hear me complaining! I do it for the love of nature, in it's many manifestations.

Those come from the coral center of diversity in the Indo-Pacific. All the reefs there are close to shore, so they are very much used to the presence of man. Under the right conditions they can thrive, but they are more challenging to care for than any other creature I know of. They require a tremendous amount of acclimitization, often requiring the aquarist to visit their home reef and slowly get them used to their new caretaker. Many fail in their attempts to captive raise them. They can only be captured by the one who will raise them and as a result the shipping costs are high. Final price? Your heart and your soul, and most of your money.

Inspired by Diane, I finally was able to get a decent shot of an amphipod (or something) on the glass of the jetties nano. At the same time I show how lazy I can be at times about cleaning the glass. IT got like this after ahhhhh.........acouple of weeks. How embarassing.

Looks like that may be an isopod; the favorable kind.

Yep! And look at all the copepods around it! Sweet pic!

Your glass just looks like a healthy marine tank. Think of all the life we "relocate" when we scrape.

-Diane

Edit: Probably a Munnid isopod:

http://home2.pacific.net.ph/~sweetyummy42/hitchpods.html

Great macro shot.

Awesome tank, quite inspiring for someone who lives less than 5 minutes from the Ponce De Leon Inlet jetties in Daytona Beach!

Thanks guys, for the info and the great links. At least ya'll didn't castigate me as bad as Shimek would have! The "pods" have been in this tank since its birth. Not every tank I've set up has the same reaction to scraping the glass Diane. It's like "DINNERTIME!" with all polyps popping.
SDT, going snorkeling and diving at the jetties made it impossible not to set up this tank, if I wanted to "keep faith" with the hobby
Thanks again Diane for the encouragement using extra lens. Now I've got to find me a loupe with more magnification!

Hey Guys!
I've had some success groiwng Nannochloropsis algae and L-strain rotifers. Apparently something good is coming out of those vats, as this is the reaction I get when I filter some and feed it to the tank!


It's been exactly a month since I took a picture of the sps coral that hitchhiked into the jetties. I'm really surprised at its growth rate, considering that it's under 2-36W PC, one 10000K and one 50/50 actinic/10000K.

4/4/08



5/4/08



Unfortunately the sweet little red tunicates and yellow encrusting sponge died back. Not sure what they didn't like.

nice growth on the sps!

Gee, I must have let the May 4th notification scroll away (if I ever got it in the first place ). Sweet pics! Congrats on getting the rotifers going--are they much work? And are they just for corals, or are you hoping to raise some gobies some day?

That hitcher is so cool, and doing so well--but then, hitchers are usually hardy and robust. The irregular polyp arrangement always strikes me! Still thinking it's a monti of some kind?

Hey, BTW, I just got my Veron's set! Marine Depot is having a 25%-off-all-books sale, so I couldn't resist!

...Be back in a few years....



--Diane

Thanks Blue. Prompted me to take a few more pictures. It's really growing rapidly.
Diane, I'm sorry if I got you hooked! After you've went through them a few times (say, like 50) you'll begin to have at least an idea of which families are in which volume so you can get to what you want to look at quicker! After you read the chapter on distribution don't be too envious that I'm going next month practically to the middle of the Indo-Pacific Center of Diversity!

Here's the coral on 5/17


I think this is the "owned" shot. Using a baster to get that bit of detritus off his surface, the polyps retracted revealing the pattern on his skeleton and the purple rim. Pretty definitive of a Montipora. Doubtful of any Atlantic coral anyway, it's growing so fast, they usually don't.

The jetties marks the eastern terminus of Panama City Beach, a nearly twenty mile long stretch of white sand. Genie and I enjoy walking along the last mile of beach before the jetties, protected by the State Park. It’s particularly pleasant early in the morning before the crush of tourists appear. The long stretch of sand beckoning from beyond the dunes feels almost biblical in the early light







The waves wash up onto the sand, bringing all manner of material representation of the great Gulf beyond.



As we walk along, pausing to pick up new hermit crab homes or abandoned barnacle clusters, I wonder if there’s some pattern written in the chaos of the sand at our feet, and I’m reminded of a quote by Isaac Newton,
"I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore,
and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble
or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth
lay all undiscovered before me."

People travel to the ocean’s edge to find something; the distant horizon, the ocean hissing at the foot of the land, glimpses of what lies under the waves beyond the beach, but I wonder if they also think of it as a burial ground, with the remains of individual creatures who by luck or genetics didn't have what it takes to survive. It’s also a dump heap, where a big bell jellyfish pulsing feebly on the shore is just the cast off husk of an individual who successfully survived his life journey and then in one last feat casts the dice of his species future into the sea and then washes ashore, his game done.
Today as we walked along, we discovered a third aspect of the beach, as the frontline in the struggle for survival. The idea is constantly placed in our awareness. The new religion of science has preached that if we'd only been more pious, made sacrifices to the proper gods, lived our lives a different way, a better way, this all wouldn't be happening. The natural world is changing, it will no longer be the same as we remember. Lives are altered, species disappear. Sea levels rise, shorelines change. Suggestions are made that the whole world will be lost. What we saw as we walked along the beach was hope. A realization that while the natural world may not be aware of our effect or responsibility, what's happening now isn't anything that nature hasn't seen before. As the waves wash in, they carry the propagules of possibility.

Maybe it's a stretch to see so much in a mangrove washing ashore, but the northernmost extent of their habitat is nearly 200 miles further south. The beach was littered with them, with no chance of survival. Global warming or not, it still gets too cold for mangroves on Panama City Beach. Amazing too, that after such a long journey, the props were green and stiff, with roots and leaves already beginning to bud out.
I recall another line, written by John Steinbeck while sailing aboard a biological collection vessel in another Gulf, of California:
There would seem to be only one commandment for living things: Survive!
This commandment decrees the death and destruction of myriads of individuals for the survival of the whole.
The mangroves suggest to me that at least they don't think the world will end anytime soon.

And being the conscientious aquarist, I gathered up at least 50 of the propagules. No reason to let so much possibility go to waste! Anyone interested in a mangrove?!

After such a heady walk, we ended up at the jetties where we watched, with no deeper meaning, a school of manta rays, working the shallows along the lagoon where dense congregations of fish larvae were trying their best to survive another day.

I like the prose.

I'm interested in a mangrove if you're interested in another colt frag.

I don't know if you got an answer already, but the spongy green macroalgae you have with the halimeda is codium.

Excellent.

Eloquent essays with beautiful pics! Thank you, Roger. Most thought-provoking and mood-evoking.




Also, for some reason, reminded me of one of my favorite cartoons:



(Feel free to delete that if you'd rather not have a cartoon in your thread!!)

I don't envision having a mangrove sized 'fuge anytime in the near or not-so-near future, but if you've got a surplus on your hands...do you think they'd survive in something like a plastic tub with SW & substrate, maybe an airstone if necessary, in front of a window? If all those conditions apply, I'd be happy to buy a few, but only if you have no better use/customer for them!

--Diane

You are so funny Diane. How could anyone have a better "customer" than you! As for the cartoon, it lends the thread an air of scientific respectability it doesn't deserve! God, I remember Graduate Seminar in school. I don't think I ever gave a talk without a cartoon to get across the salient points!
For the mangroves, here's a link to the possibilities in rearing. I can't believe I'd never searched that particular pattern for information. I discovered a whole "Mangrovian subculture" that I think I'll immerse myelf in for awhile. On our trip to the Phils next month we're staying on Apo Island which specifically mentions that they have a mangrove island nearby for snorkeling. Can't Wait!

So true!! I just gave my first grad talk at UMd...must have cartoons (or, at minimum, funny and embarrassing photos of the profs...of course, that's notsomuch for salient points as it is for making precursory jabs for their ensuing questions post-talk).

LOL!

Ah, those were the days...

I remember when our department herpetologist gave a seminar entitled "What it's like to be a lizard." We were doing some mark-recapture work with butterflies at the time, and SO wanted to respond with our own seminar: "What it's like to be a satyr and a nymph."

But I digress...

--D

This is why I kayak. To find something new, catch a glimpse and share it.

This is why I garden. Gardening is hope. Hope that next year will be a little better than the last. Reefing is gardening under glass. I feel the same hopes each time I maintain my tank. Hope that the next will be better than the last. It always is.

So happy to see that someone else relates gardening to reefing. I always consider my training in reefing to have begun with my gardening, and many of the reefers I know also have well-tended yards and gardens.
When I try and explain the connection I usually end up stammering out that "I just llike growing things".
Thanks so much for helping to put it into a better form!
And now for a somewhat unrelated aside, I discovered a miscalculation by the local landscaping company "RockWorld" where they'd bought a load of quarried "OysterRock", actually quarried limerock. It's what's used for aquaculturing rock down here in Florida. Beautiful fossilized seabed, full of shell patterns, even crinoids. Since it hadn't moved since they'd bought it, they were willing to sell it cheap, 5.5 cents/#
I bought $11 worth! I tested it for pH changes in water and also did a total phosphate test (acid reflux to completely dissolve the phosphate) and found it to be 25% of the level in Carib-Sea oolitic sand right out of the bag. Can't see any problems with it at all.

So are you going to try AQing it yourself or will you save it for base rock?

This should be fun!

--Diane

OMG definitely one of the top tanks on the site. Well done! I'm tagging along too.

Oh forgot to mention that the oyster you mentioned earlier?? Check out ebay - people sell the kind you can buy from the supermaket!! Cheeky bastages!!

We need a new FTS by the way - hasn't been one since page 4!

Sorry to take so long between posts. I've been busy selling and trading frags and working on Ghetto Beauty, but the Jetties Nano is just cruising along. Biggest change is the Montipora or whatever it is. It began to ride up on the gorgonians behind it so I moved them, the blue knobby just up and to the left, the red spiny all the way over to the right of the tank. The sponge is still slowly getting smaller,there are a few more anemones (really need to get a butterfly) but other than that everything is do fine. Note that the cucumber is still well and in the tank for quite a long time (some said they wouldn't survive) He just moves around and poops sand, must be something nutritious in there. Anyway, here's the FTS for 6/17/08


Keep your fingers crossed for the tank. I'm leaving next week for the Philippines and have a neophyte topping off every three days, and that's it. I'm in the middle of big water changes for every tank now, and have number for emergency backup if it's needed. Hopefully the next full tank shot everything will still be fine!

Beautiful tank yardboy! It is just as realistic as any tank I've seen at my state's public aquarium.

As a reminder that the jetties are really part of the ocean, and that my little tank is only a very small slice of the possibilities, there was a big excitement there recently when three hammerheads decided to visit. The area behind the rocks defining the channel is called the "kiddie pool" since the water is normally quite shallow but tourists snorkel along the edge of the rocks, protected in general. No one harmed, but note that no one is snorekling along the rocks in these pics!




No I won't be puting a shark in my ten gallon nano!

Was just looking here Yardboy. I think this is Codium edule

tank is looking as good as always =)

sweet tank. =)

Thanks Spank. I appreciate your reading the thread, getting kinda long, I know. Funny that all the Codium has been reduced by long spined urchins since the spring, at the jetties.
I appreciate the kind words guys. I'm thinking about another fish or two. The gobies are cool, but keep low profiles. I had one neon for about a week then he disappeared. Any suggestions for another fish?

I am really impressed with this project. I have a ten gallon full of different stuff i find here in the gulf on the Texas side but nowhere near as impressive as the things you find over there.

Awesome tank! I too am making a tank with livestock from my area. So far everything in my signature (except the GSP and YSP) has came from bridges, inlets and shallow reefs from Jupiter Florida and the Keys.I need to do more research on the corals available here, as the only ones I have ID'd are the Zoas I have, and the Oculina you have.

Here is a frag I found not too far from the inlet, probably 300 polyps total before I borrowed this little chunk.

Very, very sweet addition I'd say on_ice! And particulary nice that you didn't "loot" the whole colony but just took a frag. If it grows well then you didn't need the whole thing, and if it dies, you'll be really glad you didn't take it all. That is one fantastic color pattern though I really wish there was something similar to that here, but I just have to be happy with what I've got!
Thanks so much for the kind words. I'll be looking for your thread to enjoy for myself!

Click to view attachmentClick to view attachmentHey Yard heres that little piece I picked up last dive.Not much but different.

And that's why it's sometimes called "Ivory Coral". Must have come from a shaded place. Having it out in the light for awhile will eventually turn it brown.

Here's pics of the two cup coral colonies I scored off some Tampa Bay Liverock bought. The same or nearly so to what is seen here at the jetties. Getting it off aquacultured liverock is the only way to harvest it legally.

Those are very cool looking zoas. Florida seems like a really nice place to live. I stayed in destin shortly and didn't do much other than work. Didn't see those till after my original post. Those are equally as cool.

Yeah, I have a few spots I saved that I want to hit with the tank and get more stuff but right now I am away at school so it will have to wait. And the thread for my tank will be soon....I just need to take control of the GHA in my tank.....next time I am at the sand bar I need to find a sea urchin and more snails.

I'm a big fan of your tank bro. The growth on that coral is just amazing. I can't wait to see what it looks like in a year. are you using natural sea water for water changes or salt mix?

Thanks Blue, I'm amazed at the growth on that coral also. As it began to climb up the two gorgonians, I was concerned it might kill them, so I moved them. Here's the most recent shot



I do use some salt water from the jetties, it's so full of life that I might get something else to settle there, but there are also plenty of nutrients in it even though I try and collect water during high tide. As a result I only use about 20% fresh sea water, the rest is IO.

Ouch gulfsurfer! Going to Destin and only working is certainl no fun. The jetties there are just as nice as Panama City, there's plenty to see. Maybe next time you can have more fun than work! Hopefully you made lots of money for that sacrifice!

AWESOME thread, I just found this one off your sig link.
My wife's entire family is from PC, so we are up there every year for a week.
A couple years back some friends took us out on their boat into St Andrews Bay, I got to snorkel around for a few hours. I absolutely loved all the cool stuff I saw. I was not into reefing yet (I only started a few months ago) so it didn't mean as much to me as it does now. We also got a chance to go pet the dolphins that came up to the boat on the gulf side. I saw lots of pinfish, urchins, crabs, nice sea grasses, etc, but nothing fancy.

I can't wait to go back up there at the end of Aug. I think I will be at the beaches every day snorkeling instead of hanging around the grandparents house.

Great pics, I am so stoked about going up there again now that I see what all there is to see that I didn't know was even there!

on_ice... I think I will be making a trip down to Jupiter before the summer is over. I've lived in FL all my life (30+ years now) and had no idea how much of this stuff was so close to me. I always thought i had to go down to the bahamas or something just to see anything cool. I guess not!

I've taken a few trips to DeSoto and the clearwater area to snorkel, but there is nothing like what you guys are showing pics of there!!

that sps growth is amazing. and i LOVE your FTS

Looking good YB. Looking forward to the next update as always!

-Prof

You shoulda thrown a lure in front of those sharks, that would be awesome to catch one in front of all those people.

Tank looks good! All the corals I got from you are doing great!

SeeDemTails, I'm glad the corals are doing great. The ones I got from you are also. I'll be posting to the Ghetto Beauty about it's growth when I was gone, the red monti frag I got from you that's in there is growing phenomenally.


Sorry for the long hiatus. Between taking care of other tanks, taking off for three weeks on vacation and trying to overcome jet lagwhen I got back, I've been busy. It would have been easy to imagine the jetties nano could have crashed while I was gone. The only thing done to it was topoff every two days, but amazingly it did well. It did have more algae and corraline growth than any of the other tanks, but after a perfunctory cleaning, it's looking better. The main thing was the halimeda nearly took over the whole tank. It was amazing. As a result, I removed entirely the biggest plant in the middle of the tank, so maybe the corraline on the rocks won't continue to decline. I add calcium and alkalinity supplements regularly, but confess to never having tested the parameters of this tank.

This is what came out:

An here's a fairly bad shot of what it looks like now. Note the purple sea blade is shedding, maybe as a result of the water change.


The sps is still growing quite rapidly, adding several plates in my absence.


My reasons for setting up this tank were more experimental than aesthetic, and I was surprised at what a heavy nutrient load it has. I'd like to reconfigure the tank, with an external overflow and sump, maybe new lighting, since I think I've learned a lot about the way things go with this tank now, but from my past experience, I know that if I tried moving this tank I'd never be able to arrange the rock the way it is set up now, and to me that is one of the greatest accomplishments of this tank, it's aquascaping. I am really challenged on aquascaping and rarely get a setup that I or others can really like, so for now I'll just continue with this one the way it is. I am going to begin dilegently searching for filtering alternatives though, and maybe some other inhabitants that may can survive in it. The orange sponge is not long for this world, so surprising since sponges that came on the rock are doing great. I did see a tunicate that might work well in it, but I just have to find a small enough specimen now.
Thanks for continuing to watch this thread. I'm really hyped on my Philippines trip right now and so will be working mostly on the thread of that trip, but one of the things I promised myself is to go diving more here with my camera so that when I go back to the Philippines I'll be better prepared to get better and more shots.

your aquascape is one of the best looking and most natural one that i have seen. dont change it.. and welcome back. cant wait to come back for more pictures