Not sure on the Blenny yet. It has a spot like a hairy blenny, but all of the pictures of those that I've seen are a lot darker. It came from water that was REALLY shallow. I will try to get an ID or at least a profile picture of it tonight.

I'm pretty sure it is a female Hairy Blenny Labrisomus nuchipinnis Details here



Based on the wild ones I've caught, they get big and mean, so I will keep an eye on it. It has left everything else alone so far. The filefish on the other hand is constantly picking at my snails, which is ok so far.

It looks like the Hairy Blenny is a carnivore. The filefish disappeared yesterday, even though it had been doing fine, and today I saw the Blenny eat the Sergeant Majory Damsel. The damsel was swimming around in open water and became lunch. I can now only assume the filefish met the same fate.

I think I'm going to do some light collecting tomorrow. The weather isn't supposed to be great though, so we'll see. I'd like to grab some more tiny Sgt Major Damsels (Blenny Food). My purple plume gorgonian that I found washed up on the beach died after about a month of thriving with great polyp extension, not sure the cause.

Also I took some pics:

Nano Yellow Sea Whip from Sealifeinc, picture taken shortly after feeding with Reef Cleaners filter feeder formula


Coral Banded Shrimp


Hermit crab from reefcleaners

Can't wait to see what you get tomorrow!

oh the hairy blennys....also a cool fish, with lots of personality, but mean as can be. not only to fish, but when they get hungry they can tear into inverts. Will leave your shrimp alone though. Maybe it why your other fish disappeared...

Small juvie Sgt Majors are fun. Do they have that mohawk thing going on still when they put up their fins?

Well, it looks like the inverts flipped the script on the Hairy Blenny... The serpent star grabbed the Blenny and made a meal of him this morning. I think the serpent star may be evicted from this tank soon.


I suppose they look a bit like a mohawk:


I made it out today before the storm and caught some new Sgt Majors and a few other things...

What other things?

Here are a few things that I found today:

Anemone:


Sea Hare:


Mystery Animal, please help ID, it pulsates by opening and closing probably once per second. When I picked it up, I thought it was a scallop, but I've never seen a scallop move like that. The way it moves is more like a barnacle or pulsating Xenia.
Closed

Open


I also caught some shrimp that are still hiding, lots of blennies that I released, sally lightfoot crabs that I released and a decorator crab.

looks like some type of barnicle.... but whatever it is its pretty cool!

Very very cool!

I think it must be a barnacle just based on the way that it moves.

I caught a lot of crabs like this one, mostly hiding in Caulerpa


I think I found the local Blenny breeding grounds, they were easy to catch by scraping my net up against the macro algae growing on the rocks. I didn't keep any this time though.

Very cool crab!

What are you currently looking for?

No idea, just seeing what I can catch. I didn't even snorkel today, I was just wading with a net. I was planning on getting some zoas also, but the batteries on my bait bucket died, so I had to head in to keep everything alive. You will probably lose it when you see pics of how I find the zoas, there is literally about a 1 foot high band of them out of the water at low tide covering every inch of available rock.

I can't wait to see what other things you get for your tank!

My chalk bass just ate one of the tiny Sgt Major Damsels that I caught today. Looks like they are on the menu for just about everything. To be fair, they are REALLY small, maybe 1/2 inch or smaller. Maybe I should just start thinking of them as food.

Good food FTW.

How are your small inverts not getting eaten?

The serpent star will eat pretty much anything it can catch or that I give it. I usually feed it either a whole cube of enriched frozen brine or a piece of frozen squid (that I normally use for fishing) about the same size as a cube. I do this about 2x per week. Now that the Blenny was eaten, I thought that the serpent star was the only predator left, but I guess the Chalk Bass has a new taste for damsels. I haven't seen it mess with anything before today. I am happy to supplement its diet with damsels though. I wonder if they breed seasonally?

What other fish do you want besides damsels?

It will just depend on what I can catch. It is surprisingly difficult. That is unless I run into something at the LFS that I can't resist

Mystery Shrimp


Mystery Fish


Sea Hare w/ Eggs


Sea Hare w/ Eggs (water low since pump is off for feeding) the light was super bright with the water low and I couldn't really get a good picture, but the eggs are surrounded by a clear gel. Prior to seeing the gel, I just thought it was Sea Hare poo, now I think they are eggs.

this tank is quite nice and i hope u dont mind me asking but here do you collect your zoas and othe animals because it may be the same spot i use. also barnacle is called a gooseneck barnacle. the shrimp looks like a sargassum shrimp and the fish is some sort of bait fish.
p.s. that anemone i think is called a sunburst anemone and i have had them before and they are pretty but split alot and seem to move a bit.

Thanks for the IDs. I caught the fish while catching damsels (aka live food), and thought I would give it a chance. If it starts doing anything I don't like, I will just send it home.

Sargassum shrimp makes sense, I was netting sargassum and ended up with tons of tiny shrimp that my fish had a good time chasing around the tank and eating. There were some bigger ones too that I kept.

yah that is also where u probably got the sea hare because it looks like the type that live in sargassum.

Yup! You have a PM

thanks

Weeber, start a biotope so you can trade with tyty

I took some underwater pics inside the tank:

oops, you already got ideas on those...

looks like a freckled sea hare

Updates?

I had to stay out of the water for a couple weeks because I had LASIK, so nothing new for now.

I hope to see some updates soo

cool tank. I was thinking of setting something similar up. I wish I was still down in that area so I could wade out and get stuff.

New ricordea and old pistol shrimp that came as a hitchhiker on my live rock. I've been trying to get a picture of this guy for months, he decided to come out to pick at a ricordea that I just put in the tank.


New Rock anemone


Sergeant major damsels, ricordea, favia, sally lightfoot crab. I finally had two sergeant major damsels survive long enough to grow too big for the chalk bass to eat. One of them has tripled in size in just a couple of weeks.


An anemone decided to split, now I have two of them



Yellow sea whip from Sea Life Inc is still doing great, had it for a couple months now.

Wow! looks great tyty! that pistol shrimp has some nice colors

Still Looking awesome!

I've been wanting to set up a 75 gallon tank with a Pinfish, a Pigfish, and maybe a Silver Sand Trout. This just makes me want to even more. Too bad I can't afford it lol. But I think its neat how you put what you catch in your tank, to me that would make it even more special.

just now saw this thread

awsome tank man, lovin the biotope theme

thought maybe i cud help with a few things. the barnacle appears to be a Lepas sp. of some kind, and the "mystery fish" looks like a bluefish or similar species of jack-like fish.

great tank again man, makes me want to finish collecting parts for my Pacific coast biotope

Thanks for all of the comments.

The pistol shrimp is really hard to get good pics of, but here is another OK one


New rock/flower anemone (makes 2 in the tank now)


At least one of the sea hare eggs that I had a few months ago survived. I saw a small clone of the sea hare I had.

One of the sergeant major damsels has turned into a bully and constantly chases the smaller sergeant major around the tank. If it starts to chase the other fish, I'm afraid his days in the tank will be numbered....



In that case, coral banded shrimp eat Lepas sp... it didn't even make it 24 hours

That Rock Anemone is sweet!

Thanks, first order from reefs2go.com and I couldn't be happier with the quality of the livestock they sent and the packaging. They even included airline tubing for acclimation and an ice pack. The only fish I ordered didn't make it, but I don't think it was for lack of care in packaging and I'm confident that they will resolve the minor problem. I ordered from there since they have free shipping to FL.

Woo! I just ordered from them and received everything in great shape too...the only thing that they didn't send was a pom pom crab I had on my order, but everything else made it perfect!

Hands-down, the most entertaining thread I've read in a while!

Thanks 4 sharing...

that rock nem looks hungry

Lol is that a baby bluefish? Or it might be a peanut bunker.

Awesome tank man, must be sweet to have an ocean to choose from right there .

Really nice, looks like really nice diving in the Miami beach area, I had no idea.

I'm sure I missed it somewhere, but what kind of fish are they?

Sergeant Major Damsels

Oh haha, I feel stupid now since it was right above the picture .