Congrats! You've managed to survive another year!

Today was such a beautiful day. It's been rainy for so long. Couldn't resist going snorkeling though we knew the water would be bad. Caught the high tide at 8:30, so vis was as good as it was gonna be, and it was bad, maybe 2-3 ft. Still, had to go hunting. After about an hour came out cold (water is still not 70) with a few things to show.

They're all happily ensconced in the jetties tank, which I still need to take pics of. It's looking good, but I guess I'm embarassed because I've managed to put non-jetties stuff in it. It's Prop's fault. I got a Porites from him but "other" stuff too and the long-tentacled Sarco looks cool in there.

SQUISHIES

purdy ones too

those redish orange nems are probaly sunburst anemones which ive caught in numbers but under good lighting they color up and spread fast only problem is that the detach and float around.
heres a pic

PICS PICS PICS PICS PICS PICS PICS!!!!

Nice anemones
From personal experience I know that finding any inverts take time.
This tank totally inspires me to get my Tidepool biotope fully loaded with inverts.

This thread is amazing! You are so lucky you are right near a jetty. I need to learn how to snorkel/scuba so I can go somewhere cool like this.

updats? how did the new nems turn out?

hows the mantis doing?

Hey Guys. Sorry I haven't taken any shots of the tank recently. It's doing great, but I've been using my camera for diving and haven't used it for the tank.
I recently started collecting data on different stuff I find. I went diving today and came back with a very interesting gorgonian that I'd never seen at the jetties. Oh, and for anyone getting ready to dive the jetties, here's a marked map along with some shots of the gorgonian.







It was almost high tide, just a slight movement into the bay. Lots of activity in the channel. Visibility wasn't great, maybe 15 feet, but I managed to get a silhouette of these members of a large school of manta rays cruising by.

i wish i still lived by the ocean... even santa monica's pollution beats landlocked.

Heres a good website for you yardboy.

www.fishbase.org

You'll have to know what fish you're wondering about but it almost always shows a map of where the fish are found.

Very helpful website for biotopers

Thanks notwithit, I'll book that.
The gorgonian is probably a Carijoa riisei, nonphotosynthetic, but likely to be very easy to grow. I've got several frags of it and they seem to be eating Golden Pearls (5-50um). This is their second week in quarantine. If I see any indication of growth I'll have to put a frag in the jetties nano.
If you google it you'll find that they are not loved by all. Evidently they've shown up in Hawaii as hitchhikers, and are causing some grief to the local populations of coral. There is some question if it's the same species as the Caribbean, but that's further evidence that they ought to be easy to grow!

pics pics pics!!!!!!!!!!

yes yes yes!!!!!!!!!!

It's been awhile since I posted pics of my jetties nano. I've done a few things to it, changed from a standard bulkhead overflow to a cassette skimmer



I did this while the tank was running. I was a bit afraid of the curing process of silicone messing up the water chemistry, but no change in pH. I drip kalk continuously so it likey just converted the acid to acetate
While the tank isn't purely a jetties tank any more, I still have plenty of things that are found there. This years seems to be the year for these small red flower anemones, and they are quite hardy. I've also gotten pretty good at finding red mini-brittle stars, though they quickly disappear into the crevices of the tank.
Here's a shot of a pink colt coral and one of the more accessible photographically red anemones.
Thanks for looking.

I can't get enough of this tank. This is probably one of the best tank threads on NR!

BTW! Those little red nems are incredible!

+1, much too long between updates. This little tank rocks!!!!

That's a gorgeous little anemone!

More pictures! and nice nem, too.

We love this tank YB!

What a sweet little 'nem

Thanks Guys. I'm glad you like it. It's a pleasure for me.
I had two teeth pulled today, (Sigh, goodbye old friends) and the assistant told me as I left, "Go home and look at your corals" (My wife is the Hygienist there) so clearly I have a reputation of spending a lot of time looking at it.
Awhile back I attended my first frag swap and came home with these blue polyps. I've heard different things about them, from them taking over to spawning in the tank, but for sure I've had bad luck with clove polyps in the past. these had bubble algae on them, which I removed, and some wiry macroalgae that worried me until I saw a blueleg hermit harvesting it. I'd be interested in ya'll's experiences with them.


Here's one of the anemone shrimp, who spends time everywhere but in the anemones. He's just eaten a meal of "Golden pearls, 5-50u size, which I feed the gorgs but the shrimp scores too. I've got a deal working on a rose bubbletip that's real small. Maybe the shrimp will take up residence there.

One of the best!

FTS?

You have some stuff i want so bad. I now hate you. Awesome tank! i have been awaiting an update for such a long time!. Seriously, awesome tank.

I'm still working on a FTS for the tank. I've got so much stuff in my tank room it's hard to get the camera tripod far enough back from the tank to take a good shot. Frag tanks in the way, but I will get it soon.
Thought you might like this though, my only fish, a bluestripe pipefish. A different species occurs in the bay behind the jetties, but they are elusive. I've always wanted a pipefish, and after the disaster at Christmas, losing my pair of rusty gobies, I've been leery of putting any more. I got this guy and 2 sexies trading a rock of pompom Xenia I had. Good trade for me, and for them.
I"ve had him a week now. Let's keep our fingers crossed. Supposed to be the hardiest pipefish. He was in a pair, I may have to figure how to get the other one here too. I've got brine hatching, Selcon to dope them with, and the preivious owner claimed they are eating chopped mysis.

Beautiful.
More pics!!!

Awesome, I love Pipefish!
Hey, are you giving Guided Tours of your Tank Room?
I might be interested!

If you are coming to Panama City Beach, not only will I give a personal tour, but bring the gang and we'll fix supper for you too! If it's just visual, I'll try and get some shots of the whole shebang this evening. I mopped the floor yesterday after overfilling the kalk container, so it's clean!

A quick tour for anyone interested of building a tank room onto my house.
We bought the house with a covered porch specifically so we could build a "sun room" but of course that was before I became addicted to reefkeeping, so a tank room it became!
First, my RO/DI system (before sheathing it with siding). It's outside, but the siding protects it from the cold, what little we have RO/DI topoff on left, salt mixing system on right utilizes one Mag 7 pump to move water around.


Here's the porch before work begins




Nothing to it but to do it!
Framing the East wall:

Framing the NorthEast wall:

Setting the windows in the East wall:

Classic HD situation. Out of eight windows, four were busted, couldn't tell since they were all wrapped with plastic as they were loaded, so only four windows set the first day. :|

Any comments, suggestions, or smart-a$$ remarks are more than welcome!

I like it, I like it, more and more pics please!!!!

Boy would I love to pop "The Gang" into the car and take a Road Trip to your place!!!
For now, pics will have to do.

Couple of evenings later,


The following weekend, less beer drinking/lying, and picture taking resulted in more work. Funny how that goes, isn't it?

Then the stucco job. First coat was a scratch coat, next will be the finish.

I call it a tank room, but face it, toys must be shared. Genie has a green thumb with orchids, so in the winter, they will go on this side,

They are excited!




And here's my tank side. A GFCI receptacle up higher on the wall and ran two more receptacles under the windows off that. I'm also putting a utility sink in the corner with the drain running along the side of the house to tie into the sewer where it comes out of the house, right before the cleanout. the conduit for the power lines comes into the room on the other side, so a trench was dug almost all the way around the house!

Subpanel had to be installed and the circuits run underground back to the tank room.




This was my first stucco job, though I'd done surface bonding in the distant past.




Genie's got antsy for her side of the room, and every time another orchid started to blooming she'd bring it into the room to show me. I've had to clear the room of plants twice already! I understand though, as orchids don't like full sun, you can see this one has gotten a bit burned since it's been outside.

Not a perfect job but it'll keep out rain!


Here's where the equipment will go. I'm plumbing for a utility sink so I can do water changes easily. It'll only have cold water as it'll be way to complicated to run hot.

Water and drain out the wall

Hole drilled in main sewer line from the house

Uniseal to connect the drain from the sink.



Walls primed and ready to paint, but we shift back outside due to a small issue with where to put the orchids in the summer.

Oh, if you're wondering what that receptacle way up on the wall is, that's the main GFCI receptacle for the equipment. There'll be a shelf running across the back wall and the ballasts for the lights and the fan vents will be up there, plus I figured the higher up it was, the less likely water would get in it.

We love the outdoors, but the porch is gone! So we had to make a patio







Packing the soil for pavers,

My daughter sanding our homemade 20 yr. old mahogany porch swing.

Not bad eh?

The outside is finally finished.


A little closer:



Here's looking East, yes the grass is still dead where materials were stacked:


Here's inside looking West, Genies orchid room for the winter



Here's where all the tanks will go. So handy, a utility sink!



The yellow and red orchids blooming for the second time this year on our new patio.

Wow, that looks awesome! You guys did a great job.

Holy Crud, can I hire you Sir???
PLEASE??????

Here is a shot earlier this year of the inside, which includes the Ghetto Frag system, so you can see how it's kinda hard to get a FTS with such a narrow isle. I've got a fancy chair for looking at the tank, two milk crates stacked with a rug on top!

tank room = win, but, is that foil on your windows?

and, I am still going to demand an fts (or, at least two half fts's), despite your narrow hallway.

Fantastic job Yardboy!

What a fun project it must have been.

Thanks for taking the time to post all that to share with us!

Great stuff!!

Great job!

Oh No Jamie, that's not foil, it's a hi-tech "Solar reflector" on the East windows that helps keep the room temperature reasonable in summer. And yes, it's as tacky as it can be. But when we priced out real solar blinds for all the windows in that room, the foil suddenly seemed a good temporary solution.
Two half FTS's are better than none. I'll get to it.

pufferfreaklol - Great website for temperate aquariums. And cool username!

Needreefunds - Thanks for looking. DIY taken to the extreme.

Ah, a solar reflector, of course...

I can definitely see you getting some unwanted attention when the neighbors start wondering about that blue-ish glow that's coming from behind your foil covered windows.

Oh Yeah.
We're on a cul-de-sac that backs to a fairly busy road, and the police have already visited some years ago! I gave them the complete tour. Apparently they put us on a "Other-kind-of-reefer-list" because they haven't been back!

Thanks.

Are all your tanks connected to one filtration system?

i wish that was my room! dont think id be able to sleep!

Haha, nice!

That is fantastic work YB. Great Job!

-Prof

I have three separate systems.
1 - 150 display +40 frag+30 frag +10 diplay + 55 sump
2 - 20L frag +20L jetties +15 sump
3 - 25 Ghetto frag +20Hrefugium +25 ghetto sump

Only the 10 display on the big system is scheduled for removal. It was home to a randalls goby and tiger shrimp pair, but I had them 4 years and just lost the goby. The shrimp is still going strong. I recently lost a sexy shrimp that I had for five years, quickly replaced with two more (now I have three) one of which is tiny, so maybe he'll live longer.