Ouch man Hope you get better!

lol...it is a good excuse to be lazy this week.

That Sea Robin you got?


Triplefins do reside on corals. They are very cool fish though!

No, not shy at all. Not quite that colorful anymore, either, but a good fishy nonetheless.

nice list john! definitely want to get some more stuff from you! Thanks you for the rocks!

Yeah, he was doing so well for months, real personable and then I added that warty nem. He would hang out a little too close sometimes...was completely missing one day, and the nem was fat and bloated looking.. then he stung to death an aggregating anemone that was wandering a little, same with the st thomas mushroom. The nem resides in a non reef safe odds and ends tank now. It was dumb, but I was thinking of doing an Indian River Lagoon biotope, and both are from that area... it is a regular non themed tank now.

- I bet that is why they aren't in the hobby, harder to collect those species without harming coral and because of that carrying them is impractical. I bet you can find them sometimes under a common wholesale heading "assorted blennies", a lot of Florida divers do that with the blennies that pop up that they dont normally sell under a different name.

I'm definetly going to try to get one. That would make an awesome addition to my future collection of nano fish in my 125.

Hey John can you get rooted sargassum? Like the kind in the back of this photo?

I was diving in NH last summer and I swam through a school of bluefish. They have some big ass teeth. They were more scared of me though.

i do arwndsh, it is an item we have a ton of in its season, give it a month or 2. Right now it is just the drift species that die in a week in your tank

Awesome! I'll have to set myself a reminder to check out your site in a few months.

must have been freezing! summer or no summer. I couldnt get past that to find out.

Clean out yo inbox yo.

done

oh by the way...


while i have unfortunately learned that i have to spend my business collection time wisely, i have some free time too, and would look for and locate almost any of these items for a blastomussa merletti colony. even some cash for the difference...

lmk i can get one any time.

awesome, let me know though if it is too much of a pain....(I always picture you out in the middle of the desert), but if not, hook it up!

Oh, I have a real question this time

Can you get or do you ever have Oxynoe Antillarum?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cephalopodcast/1369486856/

where abouts in fl do you do most of your diving? if you still havent been to sw florida you are missing out on the real wild florida. everglades national park is amazing. only place in the u.s. with saltwater crocodiles, and there are some dinosaurs out there.

actually there is a spot in biscayne bay that has some salties too.

yeah i come across them from time to time neya usually in the summer or late spring

we go up and down the east coast of florida. what city are you heading out of? i saw some gulf coast this weekend, it was okay, i haven't headed out to sw fl though.....or the everglades. (yes sad I know). I did some tourist guided trips when I was younger but you know....and that was the homestead area.

i have seen a sign that said to watch out for crocs but i have never seen one. to be honest i was under the impression there were like 20 out there and they would be extinct soon...not the case huh? How regularly do you seem them in the bay? are they in the inlet mouths around the everglades? I always pictured that areas as being murky ...is that the case?

i live in pompano beach which is the town north of ft lauderdale. there is no shortage of salties in the glades. as for biscayne bay they are usually rare, however one has decided to call home at a certain mangrove creek mouth where i fish. it is there every high incoming tide. aggressive bastard too. will chase you right out of the mangroves. all i use is a kayak so im defenseless. the glades is very murky. diving would be pointless for recreation due to blackout conditions. collecting stuff from the mangrove roots could be cool, but not worth the risk. bull sharks usually hang around where crocs are as well. if you like fishing you need to go to everglades national park. if you ever make it that way pm me and ill give you some good spots for redfish, trout, snook, and tarpon.

lost my longer reply...

pompano is a nice area to dive, usually the water is less crowded than ft lauderdale too. i am very familiar with that area, i lived in deerfield for two years. it is nice it has everything the city has, with half the population and much less traffic. boca has some good fishing too. Miami even has some awesome diving, I go there sometimes, but the traffic is enough to keep me away.

i dont do much fishing these days, but for snook, redfish and trout you should come up my way to the indian river lagoon. Plenty of snook...plenty...redfish are a little more elusive, but not much and I think in the southern portion of the IRL trout are the least abundant, but they have a lot of them too. I am a fan of mangrove snapper, taste better than yellow tail and the rest. Snook I think is a pain in the neck, always too close to the mark for comfort or to big/too small


huge state, i doubt i am going to get to see it all, but i have crossed off a few places so far. always love new tips though on trips to take.

i love the irl. i go up to stuart to fish and surf a lot. i do some wading around the power plant, and fish from house of refuge to the inlet, ocean and riverside. i agree about the snook. i only catch and release them anyways.

there are some awesome wrecks here in pompano.

Have you considered making a similar list for algae/plants? Also is there anything you can collect apart from mangroves that will grow up out of the water? I've got an idea for a tank, and am looking for stuff apart from just mangroves with life above and below the surface.

I don't think there is another marine plant other than the mangrove in Florida or the country unless kelp counts. But I'm no expert

yeah i have to update the list too.. and my website is in need of an update but i havent had the time. if it is a species from florida let me know and i can probably get it for you at some point in the next few months, as long as it can be removed from rock when it is collected, anything that needs to stay attached to be collected wont work. (neomeris, acetabularia for the most part etc...) sometimes we get lucky and find it on a shell. I have small pics of some of them here:
http://reefcleaners.org/index.php?option=c...6&Itemid=90


i have never checked the regs for it, or what salinity it can tolerate, etc... but you may want to look into marsh grasses. it may work for a fowlr with puffers or something etc.. not sure what you are planning, but there are salt marsh possibilities if you can go with a lower sg.

Awesome, I'll check back in later in the spring/summer if I still need some.

maybe longer than that, i wont be able ti dive for at least 2 months,of

Sorry about your accident. Glad your doing ok

Ever get any squat lobsters in?

Oh I'm sorry to hear
I must have missed that post.

No problems, im keeping it pruned bck daily. It's when I have to leave the house for 4-5 days that it gets on my nerves

We went fishing down in an area of FL that had croc signs. I asked my father in law If he ever saw one. His reply "it's not the ones I see that I worry about!"

ok i will let you know. it will be a long time I think before I am able to dive again but i will let you know when i do

is everything ok? I hope your not seriously hurt dude

i am, but i will recover. looks like it is going to be months before i dive again though...i also have a bad case of bandage hand at the moment, and my typo level is gone out of control. although this post was good. Hopefully by the end of the week I will be caught up on orders and such. We ruined a lot of people's schedules this week, and I dont have an accurate list of what went out and what didnt and it is a pretty big mess, have a few upset customers to say the least, but I think that by this afternoon we will be caught up.

where about in fl?

I actually have no clue. The in laws live up near jax, we drove for hours who knows in what direction (south definitely) into a salt marsh area to fish. One side of the jet was salt marsh and calm, the other was raging waves of ocean. So we fished the marsh where i saw the signs.

Luckily we didn't stay long.


On another note, get some rest John!
My mom was recently in the icu an while she felt Ok there the pain and exhaustion really hit after she left the hospital and downgraded her pain meds.

Ii am not good at rest, but I am caught up now, all orders who were scheduled to ship this week have now gone out for sure, all emails and custom crews are answered and I have left ICU for the trauma recovery wing. Getting it done today.

So...if you are missing a reply from us, want confirmation that your order did ship and what day, and/or just want to chat about algae now that I am not all wonky, send me an email. I am still a bit wonky to be honest,but it is fine, I am running with it.

Man I'm so out of the loop...What the heck happened?? It sounds serious! Hope you get better soon John, take care.

Thank you! I busted a lung and some ribs and a spleen in a car accident, but I will survive. It is just a long heal, so it will be awhile before I go diving again.

####. best wishes buddy. lmk when to ship that algae. ( i can wait if you want me to )

thanks! maybe sometime the week after next. towards the end of march should be good.

Get well soon John, for you to be that banged up you're fortunate to be well enough to post on message boards! Certainly gives perspective to what is important.

I had a spontaneous pneumothorax a few years ago, and the spear (needle) they used for the chest tube was not cool. I just about cried like a little girl.

ouch...spontaneous must be scary as hell. i cried like a girl when they showed me the tube, was fainted by the time they inserted lol...

message boards are helping me keep my sanity, day time TV is as bad as I remember it.

Yeah, I thought I was having a heart attack, walked around with it for a day or so, little did I know I had a massive collapsed lung. Finally went to the on campus clinic and freaked the intern out when he couldn't find my heartbeat.

dude you walked with it for a day thinking it was a heart attack? are you crazy, or did you just not have insurance at the time?

I was a drunk then, now i'm sober.

oh lol...wow that is pretty crazy still then.

I had and still have a pretty good helping of dumb too

haha, at least you can have fun with it. there are some people out there who dont accept it the way we do, I feel sorry for them.

Yeah I have to; life's obstacles are inevitable, but the right frame of mind can make all of difference in overcoming and learning from them.

Heal up soon, so we can bug you about macro this and little creature that...