Hi,

Well now after a two month trial my fist nano seems to be stable and all the inhabitants are thriving... dare i speak to soon.. So I thought I would post my efforts for some feedback.

The pic below are of the tank as it was on Sunday... and yes it does need a clean and some trimming here and there.

All of the rock and inhabitants have been collected from tide pools around the island, the water hasn't yet been warm enough to collect any fish, as law requires this can only be done 1 mile off the coast only using snaorkel gear.

Would love some advice and comments on how to get everything a little more harmonious. although i feel that may bee to late as i caught both a Mantis Shrimp and Pistol Shrimp at the weekend and decided to put the Mantis in the tank.... Maybe the Pistol would have been better??..

Nice starfish and yellow blob (sponge?)! Do you know what the starfish eats?

Thanks, Yeah he/she eats my hermit crabs most of the time, but seem to graze on the coralline on the glass too.

The sponge is amazing. He started out on the floor and put out about 15 tentacles like the one you can see, and so it looked like a splat between the rocks. over time they then shortend and in the procedd he's been going up the rocks. Where the tentacles made contact they have now become mini sponges too.

A couple more..

and more..

What's the pinkish/purply stuff in the last post?

I believe it to be a Tunicate from my marine reef books, its a kind of sponge. they grow pretty fast and seem to be thriving in my tank. My Starfish eat the whole colony, but within 4 weeks they were back stronger than ever.

Here's a little more info.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunicate

Those are some beautiful tunicates. Although they are suspension feeders, they are not even closely related to sponges. They are actually chordates, so they are more closely related to vetebrates

Thanks Terps, i recall their definition was somewhat confusing at the time.

Nice tank, do you live in bermuda?

Be careful with that swimming crab, it will kill a lot of stuff when it gets bigger....or hungry.

+1 As soon as I saw that evil white crab I thought to myself "now that is just a little ball of hell waiting to let loose"

Oh dear!! that could explain a few things... and I thought it was my Mantis who was to blame..

Thanks for the heads up, Its only intended as a specimen tank so the plan is to remove some of the inhabitants each month and replace them with something different to keep it all interesting.

In reply to SeeDemTails question, yes I'm currently living in Bermuda so taking advantage of the marine life while I can. How much larger will he get? He's been in the tank for two weeks so far. maybe time to let him loose this weekend back where I found him.

Wow!!!
That's a hella cool tank! I wish I lived by the ocean so I could do something like that!

There are a few downsides, mainly that you spend hours looking for something you want, never find it but get something else and after all the time you put in, it doesn't mater what you catch its going in... usually to the detriment of all the innocent hermit crabs and corals in the tank. I removed this fella a few weeks ago..

Ooooo........That's a really pretty slug!

god i wish i lived near a reef...

That is probably my all time favorite crab description now.

i used to spend hours at tide pools when vacationing in the Carolinas. My wife just hits me in the back of the head if I look down when we are at the beach or out on the water, now that we live in Florida. I remind her she bought me my first nano cube and it is all her fault for gettingme off freshwater and into reefs.

lol

I can spend hours snorkeling or in the pools here, the only problem is that it usually takes months to find what your after and then a few more months to actually catch it. I've got a plan to buy a catamaran and to have a nano running by circulating the water from under the boat straight into the tank and back out, and thus no water change, salinity, mineral and feeding issues, would also look pretty smart in the saloon. Just pipe dreams, but maybe someday..... off to day dream..

wow i also wish i lived by a beach and tide pools to do that...and thats a bummer that you cant get little fishes from the tide pools!

and can we get a pic of the mantis?

Just thought i would update the thread with a couple more pictures form my recent collecting.

Finally the Mantis decided to show his face after weeks of waiting for him to come out. his timing was pretty poor though, as i had just begun cleaning the tank so the water was particularly cloudy, so apologies for the poor quality.

Now what do you think to the rock i found on Sunday? he's actually a type of Decorator crab, I haven't yet been able to identify his specific species, but he is invisible as soon as he stops on a rock.

And a question. the other pic is of what i think is some kind of spaghetti worm, the only thing is that I thought they had translucent tentacles, but this is rather pretty being yellow and black ribbed. Any thoughts?

That decorator crab is awesome. I've always wanted one. They've got to be one of the most interesting/entertaining creature's there are. =)

Hey Bdabio the tank is looking nice! The worm is a spaghetti, I have a couple of the same color! Here is a link that shows that color! Look at the cirratulids species.

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

Thanks for the confirmation Matty and the complement. Boat will be in the water next week so i can start looking further afield than snorkeling straight off the coast and get a few more specimens and maybe even a fish...

Plus the decorator is 'awsome' I agree.

very cool

that nudi was AWESOME......
what did it ever do to get kicked out of the tank.

always fun seeing a tank with a bunch of weird stuff you have never seen before

I would have loved to keep the nudi, but I was a little worried he would run out of food in the tank rather quickly. They have very specific diets and are quite hard to replicate in what is essentialy a young tank.

Its also my understanding that if they die they relese lots of toxins which can kill everything in a small tank.

This tank is ment as a specimen tank so the inhabitants get returned to the wild every couple of months.

On my bberry so excuse any typos

July 08,

I am struggling to keep the tank cool, I have replaced the controller on the Chiller which is now helping to keep the temps down, but they are still up at scary temperatures. It hit 85 last night.
Strangely it doesn't seem to be having too much of an effect of the inhabitants other than some of the algae. although i cant believe its doing the coral much good.

Finally managed to get a picture of the pistol shrimp after he had been sparing with the crab and i thought i would post a rather blur picture of the baby Sergeant Major (he just kept moving too quickly) that i caught at the weekend.

BDAbio

love the tunicates wish i coudl get them in my tank.

I made a small tank that I thought would be cool... It was all stuff that I found on the shore of Boston Harbor. I got some macro that was attached to rocks, some sand right from the water, a few rocks with this weird encrusting brown stuff and 4 snails. The tank was only half a gallon.

The snails ate large hole in the algea, leaving my tank looking ugly almost right away. Then I went to Martha's Vineyard and found 4 tiny (about 3/4th of an inch including legs) crabs. One of thes crabs meets this description pretty well! "now that is just a little ball of hell waiting to let loose"

He ate the three other crabs (cannibal!) and we saw him eat one of the snails. He rolled it upsidedown and was reaching his claw in grabbing bits of meat. Now the tank is just a bunch of rocks that are in different places every day.

BDAbio, where in Bermuda are you? My wife's from the island and her parents still live there. There's some awesome snorkeling there, for sure. I'd love to do a large scale Bermuda reef biotope someday.

any idea what mantis species that is?

try checking here:
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/arthropoda/cr...list/index.html

i would bet its a Neogonodactylus bredini