I've been working on this for about 6 weeks now and finally got it setup in my house where I can actually take some pictures.

Everything I'm using is local, water changes will be done with local water as well. I'm sure there are a few things in here that will fall prey to a couple of the critters but hopefully not.

Here are some pictures of a few of the critters that are in there.

First is the new tank next to my biocube


The one little guy I love ....so far until he starts to eat everything. This is a type of spider/arrow crab. You can see how it attaches sponges and macro algaes to his body....I call him sniper.



A little fuzzy because the water is a little cloudy...but can you find sniper?


Limpet


Warty Sea Anemone...it seems a little pissed but they always look this way.


Sea Squirt


Long Claw Hermit Crab....with some hydroid looking things all over its shell


Pregnant Shrimp


Sargassum grass



more to come....

Cool.. that would make a nice mantis tank

Nice tank. Can not wait till your tank clears up. What are you using for a chiller?


H

I'm not using a chiller yet and won't need to worry about bringing the water temp down until about Sepetember so I'll be looking for one this summer. The water temp where these came out of is already around 70 degrees and will peak around 80 in July and August.

whats the winter temp there?

Around here, about 1.5 hours south, surface temp sees low 50's, high 40s if it's a long winter. It should be fine as long as he gets it down into the high 60's for the winter.

I'll be following along, I've always wanted to try a local biotope! I'm sure Travisurfer will chime in as well, he knows more about the local stuff than I do.

hmmmmm....

One of those warty's would look pretty nice in my cw tank...

Yeah keeping it in the 60's shouldn't be hard at all, we'll see.

Here are a couple new pictures. I added a new Koralia 1 pump today to replace the Maxijet 1200 and it stirred up the tank pretty good so its still a bit cloudy.

I have no idea what type of hermit crab this is. I thought it was a long claw but its different than those. The long claws appear to be smooth while this one is hairy and the blue peacock looking thing doesn't appear on the long claw hermits.



Long Claw hermit


Red or Purple Porcelain Crab, there are a couple of them in there.


Anemone



Pipe Fish



Random Rock with macro attached

very cool, I love local tanks. and I had one of those shrimp once! I stole it from north carolina for my tropical tank. I had it for around a year in a half, got along with everything nicely.

cool tank... tagging along... more FTS!!!

Here you go FTS

cool tank, that blue hermit kind of looks like a mantis shrimp!

very cool, i have a biotope set up similarly, i dont recognize that hermit, i have had many longclaws , (however they seemed to get eaten by my much larger stripped leg hermit) so i can just about guarantee a confirmation on the fact that that isnt a longclaw with the blue on it also looks nothing like the flat claws that i see from time to time

Yeah its not a long claw, I've kept those for over a year now and will say I love those little guys. I don't like keeping the striped ones, if its the same ones we're talking about...brownish in color with stripes running the length of their legs rather than bands?

I've sent out the pictures of the hermits with the blue spots to several people that can hopefully identify them. The other big different that I notice is that long claws are just about hairless and the one with the blue spots has hair on it.

A few new pictures

Purple Urchin


The unidentified hermit crab


Long Clawed Hermit


Pipe Fish (its eating so I'm happy!!!!)


Brittle Sea Stars


Pregnant Shrimp


Angry Tiger Shark! Just kidding, this obviously isn't in my tank, this is one I caught a couple of years ago

How did you know?


Looks like a great start. As far as the local stuff, the sargasso environments provide a decent amount of interesting wildlife- there's the sargasso fish and a frogfish endemic to sargasso environments. I see that you've definitely been down to some of the tidal rock areas and maybe the dock? I've heard of a few types of mantis shrimp in the rockier areas if you want to go that route. One of my friends had managed to catch a seahorse in one of the local waterways as well. In the marshes, there's quite a few nassarius type snails that would probably do alright in the tank- just get some that are in deeper water if you can to avoid transferring parasites from snails that eat bird poo. While it may be a bit unorthodox, getting an oyster would be pretty interesting and would definitely help to clear up the water. Urchins are always and option as well. One of my local teachers keeps blue crabs in the school tanks and they seem to do quite well in captivity; they're also much more colorful once you get them out of the muck. As far as fish are concerned, you could probably find a few interesting tropical species amongst the dogs although you'd have to watch out for coral eaters if you want to go that route. Speaking of which, there are quite a few local gorgonias and whatnot that would look nice IF you can find them. Comb jellies are doable but you have to be extra careful around pumps and filters although I haven't kept them for any long periods of time. I think most of the other more tropical stuff is out in the gulf stream. I'm trying to think if there might be anything else you would be interested in- I'll let you know if I can think of anything but it looks like you have most of the cool stuff.

I apologize for the messiness of that. I just tried to think of any of the local stuff that I've come across. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the info!

Yeah last year I caught a bright orange sea horse but didn't keep it for more than a few days as I didn't know what it would take to keep it. I know a great place to find the gorgonias, very beautiful in orange, yellow, and reds but they are in that gray area of what you're allowed to collect without a special permit.

I do have some of the nassarius type snails in there now and they're doing great. I've also found some banded tulips, one large, that are nice addition.

I plan to go collecting again this weekend to see if I can find anything new.

Good luck

Some new pics

chiton on the back wall



Close up of pipefish



Feather Blenny and unidentified hermit crab


Same Crab


Long Claw hermit crab


Some type of goby, not sure on an id and I need to get a better picture. Its sharing a tunnel with a pistol shrimp though.

Awesome tank.

Thanks

Glass Shrimp with a piece of flake food showing through its body...LOL.



Good pic of the Feather Blenny actually showing some of the color.

so cool! I love that feather blenny.

Got a good picture of the porcelain crab eating today.

I've found these before but this picture came out pretty good so I figured I'd post a picture of it.

Bright Orange Sea Star, about 2" across...this is as big as they get.


File Fish, about 3/4" long

gees, nice star.

this is a little late but ur warty nem looks pissed because they are nocturnal or at least the red warty nem i found is im not sure about regular ones.

I couldn't find anything on it but have been observing it about an hours after lights out and it appears to be the same at both times. It still doing great with the same colors, maybe a touch darker. Eating great..actually everything in the tank is eating great.

Well I was layed off two weeks ago so I decided to take down the local tank. It didn't cost much to run but I'm going to turn the 20 long into a frag tank in the hopes of making just enough $ off of it to keep my biocube running....won't be able to make much off of a 20 though...LOL. I gave the livestock to another local reefer who was in love with it so they will be well taken care of.

Did you delete all your photos?

edit: I should have first said sorry you were laid off.

i cant see the photos as well

Crap no....I seperated my photobucket account into different folders and moved them around, let me see if I can fix that.

Ok, I think I got them fixed.

dang, that sucks. best of luck finding another job.

good luck finding another job,
amazing 20. good luck

Nice to see a local tank. It looks great!!

That undenified goby is an Oyster ToadFish. I live in VA and i have one in my tank

Did You find All that stuff in the ocean ..or did you buy it?