Most Recent FTS


Tank Intro
I started this tank in January of 2010 with a nice long cycle due to live rock that was extremely alive from Sealife Inc (which I highly recommend). I did my best to minimize the cycle to keep as many of the live rock hitchhikers alive as possible. The tank is a Biotope type tank that aims to recreate the FL/Caribbean ecosystem in Miami. That ecosystem is approx 500ft from the tank location, reminds me of the dentists office in Finding Nemo where the fish can see the ocean (first and last Finding Nemo reference, I promise) The water here is full of tons of life. I frequently see Angels, Butterfly fish and File fish from a nearby jetty. At low tide, the rocks are covered in snails, limpets and Zoas. After storms I see gorgonians, sea fans and sponges covering the beach.

View of the ocean from the tank


Current List of Contents
This list will be updated as the tank progresses

Equipment:
Tank: Oceanic Biocube 29
Light: Sunpod 150w MH
Bulb: 14K Phoenix reef optic
Filtration: InTank Media Basket with filter floss and ChemiPure Elite
Filtration: InTank Refugium with Chaeto and underwater lights
Heater: 100w Stealth
Flow: Rio 6HF (noisy), Koralia 2
Live Rock: 30 lbs SealifeInc (recommend to everyone, tons of hitchhikers)
Water: Ocean water collected at high tide
Sand: Collected at low tide

Fish
Pygmy "Cherub" Angelfish Centropyge argi
Atlantic Chalk Bass Serranus tortugarum

Hitchhikers
2 Favia
3 FL Porites
Encrusting Sponges
Ringed Anemone Bartholomea annulata
Nudibranches
Pistol Shrimp (took almost 2 months to spot this guy)
Spider Crab Libinia dubia
Brittle Stars Amphiura stimpsonii
Spaghetti Worms

Inverts
Lots of assorted FL Zoas
Barnacles
Purple Plume Gorgonia Muriceopsis flavida
2 Rock Anemones Anthopleura krebsi
Yellow Sea Whip Pterogorgia citrina
2 Green Ricordea Ricordea florida
Yellow Ricordea Ricordea florida
Large Cinnamon Brown Zoanthids Protopalythoa grandiflora
1 Peppermint Shrimp
Coral Banded Shrimp

Hitchhiker Favia


Hitchhiker FL Porites


Zoas and Zig Zag Periwinkles

Biotope Inspirational Photos that I have taken while diving
All of these pictures were taken with an Olympus Point and Shoot camera rated to go down to 33 feet, but I have taken it down to 68 feet without a major problem.

Lots of life in this one



Big Sponge with Cherub Angel inside



Not sure what kind of coral this is






Really cool sponge



Four Eye Butterfly



Big Sponge, Slipdick Wrasse and a Yellow Wrasse



Tang



A few more:












If I mis-identified any of these, please let me know and I will correct, thanks

Now that all of that is out of the way, I want to ask for any website recommendations for Caribbean species. Currently, I plan to buy from sealifeinc.net or tomscaribbean.com for fish/corals, but I am particularly interested in finding a good source for different varieties of macro algae for the display.

to Nano-reef!

Your off to a great start. I like the originality of going with your local eco-system.

It's mandatory within my lifetime to visit Florida and the keys and go diving. Good luck I'll be tagging along on this one.

EDIT: check out reefcleaners. org they have some nice macro

For macro you should check out http://reefcleaners.org


Neat looking hitchhiker corals

wow great job and awesome pics i wish i knew how to dive so that i could go and see stuff like that

Awesome setup !! So cool that the real thing is only 500 ft away

Great rock work. Must be nice having that view and the inspiration right there. When I look out my window I see Cacti.

There really is some decent diving right here in FL. I have been diving in a lot of places, including the Great Barrier Reef, and diving in the FL Keys is definitely worth the air.



Reefcleaners is great, I will probably put an order in with them. They are located about 100 miles north of me on the same coast of FL, and I assume that is also where they collect. Maybe I will get the snorkel out this weekend and see if I can find some macro. I will, of course, double check the regulations first, I know things like seagrasses are illegal to take.




I agree, I have actually caught puffers/files while trying to catch bait from the jetty just a short walk from the pic. I will try to get my underwater camera out and take a picture of the ocean from actually inside the tank this weekend.

ty- what fish is that in your avatar?

I think your tank is screaming for a jawfish! Looks great.

I've been thinking about what fish to add and a jaw fish is definitely on the probably list. I need to come up with a lid for the tank first though. I'm thinking about a trip to Home Depot tomorrow to pickup materials for a lid and also for a jaw fish condo.

I actually don't know what fish it is in my avatar, I took a pic of it on a dive in Grand Cayman, here is a slightly bigger version, maybe somebody can help ID it?

EDIT: It is an Indigo Hamlet

Murex Snail Kill Count (that I've seen):
1 x Astrea Snail
1 x Nassarius Vibex Snail

Here is a pic of the super-evil predatory not-reef-safe murex snail. It spends most of the day tightly suctioned to a rock, but goes hunting at night. You can see in the pic that, proportionally, the foot is a lot bigger than that of a lot of other snails.


Here it is doing work on a Nassarius Vibex Snail:

When I first set up my South Florida biotope tank I had a bunch of predator rock whelks. Good times were had by all, except the limpets that they ate.

I only have one in the tank right now. I'm not concerned about snail replenishment though, so I will probably add more. I wish I could train it to only eat the ones that climb out of the tank though.

I found a limpet on my sunpod this morning, he is going to become serpent star food if he tries that again...

Currently there are a lot of inhabitants that only come out for pictures at night. Here are some shots with flash.

Emerald Crab


Sally Lightfoot Crab


Starfish (Can anyone confirm whether or not this is a Caribbean species? If it's not I will move it to another tank to maintain the integrity of my biotope)

That's cool. I think a jaw and a couple of small sergeant majors might be cool. I can't think of too many fish that stay small enough to keep in a nano and still look cool. As long as you have a couple inches of sand and the rock is set on the bottom of the tank you don't really need a jawfish condo IMO. Just make sure there are some pockets or caves in the rock under the sand for him to dig into. Mine is chilling like that and he's fine.

Look what I found washed up on the beach today:

Purple Sea Feather


Polyp Extension


I thought for sure that it was dead when I picked it up, but it looks like it is still alive!

TyTy, those pictures make me homesick. Beautiful.

I'd watch out for the SL crab--I've heard they become very predatory once they get a little size on them.

I'd also check out Gulf Coast Ecosystems for plants and macros. They collect and culture a wide variety, all of which are FL/Caribbean/Gulf of Mexico species.

I went snorkeling yesterday and spent an hour trying to catch some sergeant majors... If anyone has any tips for catching fish, I would GREATLY appreciate them. After snorkeling, I got my fishing gear out with a tiny hook and attempted again to catch them in the spots where I knew they were hiding... they just constantly stripped my tiny hook. I almost caught one, but he jumped off the hook before I got him over land. I did catch one fish while snorkeling that I kept in my tank for about 24 hours. He was just too big for the tank though, so I released him back into the ocean today. I really wanted to keep him, but he never would have been happy in such a small tank. I did get to take some pictures of him first though...

Spiny Boxfish/Striped Burrfish (Chilomycterus schoepfi)







That link is awesome. That is exactly what I have been looking for!

I took some more pics of the tank contents today...

Limpet checking out the ocean (out of focus in the background), this guy somehow climbs up to this same spot on top of my Sunpod almost everyday.


A couple pictures of some FL Porites hitchhikers that came on my live rock from Sealife, the second one didn't fare so well during the cycle, but is making a comeback



FL Zoa colony that I transferred over from another tank, this started as just 5 polyps!


Scroll Algae (found this while snorkeling) it looks a little rough, I will have to keep an eye on it

Awesome tyty! check out my tank and maybe we can do some trading
it is to cold to snorkel lately lol

The Caribbean Queen

I am all for trading. The air was a bit cold on Saturday, but the water was ok.

I know a good spot for collecting Zoas at low tide, you don't even have to get wet! Unfortunately we can only take 5 polyps per day, but they grow like weeds.

PM me where u go...maybe we can meet up one day and snorkel

Very Very nice tank tyty!

I am really interested to see what fish you get in here!

Tagging!

I went fishing after work today and caught what I'm thinking will be the first permanent fish-inhabitant. No pics of it yet since it is completely buried in the sand...

I also caught some Sergeant Majors... I put one in my bait bucket by himself and it went absolutely ballistic. I have never seen a fish go so crazy. This made me re-think my plans to add one to the tank and I released him and his friends that I caught later back into the ocean.

I am going to the LFS tomorrow since they get most of their fish on Tuesdays.

Have u tried a slurp gun?

sarges do fine in tanks, they really like to swim. for catching fish, we take a cast net with the smallest mesh you can get and take it down when we dive, then put it over the fish. they dont know theyre caught until you squeeze em into a corner of the net where you can grab em. you just have to do it where there isnt much rock, or at least any rocks with verticalness to them if ya know what i mean...

Not recently, but I've tried one in the past. I have had much better luck with hand nets.



Good to hear, the ones I caught today were a bit larger, around 4". I couldn't catch any small ones, even though I saw lots of them. Maybe if I can catch some smaller ones I will give them another chance. Or if my LFS has some, but I've never seen them there.

sabiki rigs...

That's what I was using today. I ended up adding a bit of squid to the hooks and I was pulling fish out every time I dipped it in the water.

I have a smaller sabiki rig that I will try tomorrow or later this week to see if I can get some smaller Sergeant Majors. There were so many small grunts and snappers that reloading the hooks with squid became almost tiresome, haha.

What an awesome tank and idea... Love that you get stuff from the ocean right out your door. Must be so cool.

good job

Just my $.02, but I'd skip the sergeant majors. They get big and mean, and I'd hate for you to have to tear up your aquascape trying to remove them. Sea Life Inc. sells Caribbean and Atlantic fish, including lots of nano-sized species (including jawfish when in season, chalk bass, and gobies) that would be perfect for your biotope.

Awesome tank!

-Prof

Beautiful tank and awesome photography!
I liked it so much I had to signup and subscribe to it.

Btw, I found you as a first page Google result for South Florida Biotope. Congratz.

I just bought an old 75g long (72") that is perfect for a terraced mangrove to seagrass sandbed to reef SFL biotope I've been daydreaming about for over a year now.
Your build boosts my inspiration.

Thanks for all of the encouraging words. I got a shipment from sealifeinc today, so pictures and my glowing review will be posted tonight.

Alright, so I updated the first post tank details and added a new FTS:


I took a picture of what the fish see out the window:


I also got a shipment from SealifeInc and took pictures of some of the new inhabitants:
Atlantic Chalk Bass Serranus tortugarum


Pygmy "Cherub" Angelfish Centropyge argi



Other things that were added a couple of weeks ago:
Royal Gramma Gramma loreto


Molly Miller Blenny Scartella cristata


Hitchhiker Nudibranch


HUGE Harlequin Serpent Star Ophioderma appressum


Dwarf Blue Leg Hermit Clibanarius tricolor

Really neat! I love this biotope!

Thanks, as usual, I can't say enough about how great SealifeInc has been. I had some special shipping requests that they met without a question and everything always arrives in great condition and packaged very carefully. Also, they seem to always send extras! This time I got an extra 2-mouth Ricordea and an extra rooted halimida.

I also noticed the inevitable.... some aiptasia in the tank. I found a few of them peeking out from some Zoa clusters:


I have had good luck with Peppermint Shrimp in other tanks, so I picked up a couple. They are a Caribbean species and I like to have them in the tank both to control aiptasia and I think they are fairly hardy and interesting to watch "dance".

This tank is too awesome!!!

- that is, a banded sea star they call them. i can get you the species name from a book I have around here if you are into that, but they are fairly common. They usually come out at night on the mud flats.

Thanks for the ID, I guess it can remain in the biotope for now. It has been spending a lot of time on the glass lately, which is a lot better than buried in the sand. Also, the new snails/hermits look like they are enjoying their new home.

cool critter, they top out about the size of your hand give or take.

Extra tiny filefish, it is about the size of a dime:


My first Blenny wasn't very friendly, so I returned him to his ocean home and replaced him with this one that is much smaller and seems to be much friendlier so far:


A ricordea that I have spent about a week trying to get to attach to a rock (even gel superglue wouldn't hold it) hopefully it will stay put now. Don't mind the angry Zoas and hermit crab culprit to the left.


These guys will almost certainly be a temporary addition. They are currently really small, maybe the size of a thumbtack. They do like to hang out together, I'd call it "schooling" or "shoaling", but the fish terminology police would show up. When I caught them, they were in a group of 20+ schooling shoaling lingering around together.

Awesome!

Do you know what species the fish are?

The last two are Sergeant Major Damsels, one of them started to not look so good so I took him back to the ocean. However, the remaining Sergeant Major, the filefish and the new blenny happily ate cyclopeeze yesterday.

I had one for a few months in my picotope. Cool little fish. Eventually carpet surfed

Do you what spevies the blenny is?

The filefish looks like a Tassled Filefish.