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Cultivated Reef

15 gal Coldwater Dual Biotope


Jamie

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kingwintergreen

Really impressed, I like what you've done. You've captured some some really cool images. Did you know that the turbans' shells are sometimes heavily worn like that because they often live over a hundred years? Makes you kind of want to take good care of them, huh? Don't harsh snailfish too much, I had one long ago, and while it was initially shy (so much so that I didn't even realize I still had it for a while), it became so tame that it begged for food quite unashamedly whenever I approached the tank. Why haven't you tried Metridium yet (they are awesome)? Or have you? Looking forward to the orange-stripe pics!

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I dont think there are many others with coldwater systems but I have not really looked. I know Steve Weast has an awesome one. Do you only have the coldwater or do you have a reef tank as well?

Nice new pics!

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Yeah, that was my planned order - brooding anemones, strawberries, and perhaps an Urticina or two. We'll see, I'm still a few months off.

 

Cool. Can't wait to see your tank!

 

Really impressed, I like what you've done. You've captured some some really cool images. Did you know that the turbans' shells are sometimes heavily worn like that because they often live over a hundred years? Makes you kind of want to take good care of them, huh? Don't harsh snailfish too much, I had one long ago, and while it was initially shy (so much so that I didn't even realize I still had it for a while), it became so tame that it begged for food quite unashamedly whenever I approached the tank. Why haven't you tried Metridium yet (they are awesome)? Or have you? Looking forward to the orange-stripe pics!

 

That's really cool about the turbans! I had no idea. Kind of ridiculous for a snail to live so long - I'll make sure to give them extra good care. :) It also makes me think that they could be depleted really easily if more people get into collecting for their tanks. If they live that long they probably don't grow very quickly or reproduce very often. Interesting.

 

I'm glad the snailfish worked out for you. I see them pretty often, but I've never taken one after that first time. Maybe I'll try one out again - they are really cool!

 

I have a couple metridiums in the top tank, but they've never been happy. It's not like they're dying, but they always just stay sort of half opened up. They don't look at all like they're supposed to. I'm not sure what species they are. They were pretty big when I got them, so I think they're M. fimbriatum, but they've never opened up in my tank like they were when I collected them. I don't know what it is - Too much flow? not enough flow? Food too big? (I feed them mysis) They do eat (I think, I mean, I think they'd be dead by now if they didn't). They survive in polluted bays, occasional brackish water, they're pretty tough in the wild, you'd think they'd be the perfect candidates for a fishtank.

 

I'll get some pics of the orange stripes soon. They're really pretty, and look like they'll make it. They've all shown at least a little tentacle, so they should still be able to eat, and they look like they're healing up, so I'm confident they'll recover.

 

I dont think there are many others with coldwater systems but I have not really looked. I know Steve Weast has an awesome one. Do you only have the coldwater or do you have a reef tank as well?

Nice new pics!

 

Steve actually sold/donated his tank to someone else, who keeps it at a fishstore in SE portland, so I got to go see it in person! It was really cool (strawberry anemones everywhere!). Unfortunately, since it's not actually the store's tank, they couldn't sell me anything out of it. I'll have to find strawberries elsewhere. :sigh:

 

-Jamie

 

Edit: Oh, and I have had a tropical tank for a couple years, but I'm in the process of taking it down. Just going to focus on coldwater for a while. I may set up a tropical pico in the future though.

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Jamie, the one Metridium I had acted the same way, always looking sad and frumpy. The more I fed it (and the smaller the food) the happier it was. The get a near-constant barage of food in the wild; when I started feeding cyclopeeze and frozen mini-krill every day, it started to open up more. Then I went on vacation and it died, so who knows. :(

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Interesting. yeah, I've read they don't have a great track record in aquariums. I just need to get a live zooplankton drip going! lol. Maybe if I had a tank culturing phytoplankton that would drip into a tank culturing zooplankton (phyto would be food for the zoo) that would drip into the main tank, it would work. That would be hard to keep going!

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wow while its not as colorful as a regular reef tank, i am fascinated by your tank because it is truly amazing. and it mimics the wild environment. afterall it looks SO REAL... love it

 

 

keep up the good work.. imma subscribe to this and come back to check up on you..

 

surprise us wt more pics ;)

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Sorry, the snailfish was in one of the very first renditions of my coldwater tank, before I was any good at photography. I only have maybe three pictures of that tank, none of which are of the snailfish, and all of which are on my other computer, which is currently broken. If I do get another though, believe me, you will get lots of pics. This is sort of what the one I had looked like, but mine was a more gray color: http://week.divebums.com/2007/Dec17-2007/s...tracy-clark.jpg

(hopefully that link will work)

 

-Jamie

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kingwintergreen
hmmm. Well, here's the website, just scroll down, it's second from the bottom.

 

http://week.divebums.com/2007/Dec17-2007/index.html

 

That work?

 

Wow! Almost every pic is amazing! That website was truly a treat, thanks.

 

If I may say so, I've had some success with Metridium. They do close up. Several times a day, in fact. You will see it if you observe them long enough in the wild. But, if they are not open and feeding at least half of the time, they are either irritated or "waiting out" a prolonged absence of food (like most anemones and corals, it is taking an unnecessary risk to expand and expose themselves more fully to their surroundings without some payoff). Food or the scent of food isn't always required to induce feeding behavior, just conditions that present the likelihood of a coming feeding (i.e. the right type of current). I'm not sure why, but they really like waterflow produced by airstones (but not being in the path of the bubbles), particularly if they are hanging at the surface getting hit by the surface water as it is pushed away by the vertical column of rising bubbles (hope that made sense). Another trick I know of won't always open them up, but will keep them open longer-- keep a small bucket on hand, and every day or so use it to dump water into random (especially more stagnant) areas to kind of mess things up a bit (especially the detritus, if not the microfauna associated with it). Maybe they think the tides are coming back in?

 

Orange-stripe pics?

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If you liked that site, I bet you'll like this one too. Tons of excellent coldwater pics (and a few tropical ones too). If you click the "images by subject" bar on the left, and click the link for california hydrocoral, there are some fantastic "reef-scape" pictures.

 

I got some oyster eggs, so we'll see if that gets them to open up fully. It's not like they're entirely closed, their tentacles are still out, they just stay shrunken down all the time. I'll get some pics so you can see what I mean. Maybe they just haven't settled in, this tank hasn't been up for very long yet, maybe they'll get happier as time goes on. If they like the random "bucket flow" you described, I wonder if maybe they'd be happier in the surge part of the system. If the oyster eggs don't help, maybe I'll move them down there. It does have some lower flow areas that are still turbulent. If that still doesn't work, I'll try the airstone.

 

Orange stripe pics soon! Hopefully tomorrow, but no guarantees.

 

-Jamie

 

Edit: oops, forgot to link the site, hehe. Here it is: http://www.coldwaterimages.com/

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Orange stripe pics! Finally!

 

Before oyster eggs:

DSC_1422.jpg

 

After oyster eggs:

DSC_1443.jpg

 

If you're getting tired of these urchin macros let me know:

DSC_1418.jpg

 

Anemone (another possible contest entry, though I'm too stupid to figure out how to empty my photos folder, and can't upload anything new :( ) :

DSC_1428.jpg

 

The turbans have been doing a fantastic job cleaning up all the unattractive hair algae, and now you can see the pretty red ones! coralline on the left and an unidentified macro on the right:

DSC_1431.jpg

 

I tried squirting oyster eggs directly onto the metridiums, and I think the liked that, the both opened a little more than usual. I also reduced the light a lot, which I think they might also like. I'll find out soon enough!

 

-Jamie

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Yesterday I decided to move the metridiums down to the surge tank, and they already look a lot better. They are both located in areas of pretty low, but still random, flow. I was a little worried about they nudibranchs munching them in the top tank, and thought maybe the surge would help them. It looks like it has!

 

I also changed the lighting somewhat. the old lights were just in place till I built hoods for the lights I had in mind. I just took my tropical tank down, and the refugium light happened to be the perfect size for the bottom coldwater tank. I just screwed in a couple wooden "bars" on either side for it to rest on. I might make a thin wood casing around it, just for aesthetic reasons, but I'm a little worried about the fire hazard, and it doesn't look to bad now, so I don't know. I'll post a pic and see what you guys think. The lighting for the top tank will be two or three fluorescent "under the cabinet" lights. I found them at home depot, and since spectrum doesn't matter, I thought they'd work great. I haven't built the hood for the top part yet, but hopefully I'll get around to doing that within the next few days.

 

 

I'll be back with photos soon!

 

-Jamie

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Well, now that photobucket finally decided to let me upload some photos, here is the full system "shot." In an effort to give a sense of what it actually looks like, I'm putting the fts of the top tank above the fts of the bottom tank. We'll see if that works.

 

DSC_1447.jpg

DSC_1446.jpg

 

And, i found a new anemone to be obsessed with! Meet Anthopleura artemisia (this link better work):

 

http://calphotos.berkeley.edu/cgi/img_quer...leura+artemisia

 

I've actually seen these before, but never the orange kind, I didn't know they even came in anything but gray-green till I found that website. And so the search begins for A. artemisia. :)

 

-Jamie

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Thanks dshnarw. Is your CW tank still going?

 

Jeremai - Those pics are all from California, and I also read that Corynactis californica grows intertidally in California! I have to go tidepooling there! Too bad you can't really take anything. <_<

 

-Jamie

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Thanks dshnarw. Is your CW tank still going?

 

Jeremai - Those pics are all from California, and I also read that Corynactis californica grows intertidally in California! I have to go tidepooling there! Too bad you can't really take anything. <_<

 

-Jamie

 

 

yep...still going, pretty much unchanged.

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Thanks dshnarw. Is your CW tank still going?

 

Jeremai - Those pics are all from California, and I also read that Corynactis californica grows intertidally in California! I have to go tidepooling there! Too bad you can't really take anything. <_<

 

-Jamie

Meh, as long as you're not on a nature preserve it's not really an issue for F&G. They don't wander around patrolling every tidepool in California, especially north of Monterey. I mean, don't go every weekend and take a hundred anemones, but a couple won't get you arrested.

 

:ninja:

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yep...still going, pretty much unchanged.

 

Update you're thread then! Or at least post a pic here. I need to drool over your pretty red anemones (trade?) :)

 

 

Meh, as long as you're not on a nature preserve it's not really an issue for F&G. They don't wander around patrolling every tidepool in California, especially north of Monterey. I mean, don't go every weekend and take a hundred anemones, but a couple won't get you arrested.

 

:ninja:

 

Yeah, I've found that out here, too. I've broken the occasional law while tidepooling. :cough: invasive tunicate :cough:

I definitely need to go to California. Hmmm, I wonder if they'll let me take anemones on the airplane. I took a couple shrimp and hermits home from north carolina a couple years ago. That was exciting. C. californica would be much cooler though, as long as they didn't melt. But it's only like a 2 hr flight at most. I definitely have to do that. Actually, I might go to college in Calif. I could just collect then and have a little dorm room coldwater tank! Exciting.

 

Anyways... back on topic (kind of. Not really actually) My Opalescent nudibranchs have eaten everything in the top tank so far, aside from the Urchin and the snails. They even ate the gooseneck barnacles! What's interesting though, is that they ate the invasive tunicate. If you could get them to eat it in the wild it would would excellent, because apparently it's quite problematic in nature. Next years science research project perhaps?

 

Oh also, last time I was tidepooling at Manzanita I saw a couple Chinese mitten crabs. I didn't immediately recognize them, but after looking at pics on the internet, that's definitely what I saw. Just like green shore crabs, but with furry claws. I bring it up because they are a really destructive invasive species. They drill into cliffs and make them collapse, and they eat/out compete all sorts of native species. Next time I go back I'm going to try to catch one, or at least get pictures so I have "evidence," because you're supposed to report things like this when you find them. :sigh: :(

 

-Jamie

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lol, I think taking the anemones on the airplane would be smuggling - probably not a good thing if you get caught. If. ;)

 

With the nudibranchs, they don't appreciably effect the tunicate population in the wild for a couple reasons: there is tastier fare out there, and the reproduction rate for the tunicates far exceeds that of the nudibranchs. They help, but not enough unfortunately.

 

Definitely try and catch one of the crabs next time you're out, the Powers that Be would be interested for sure. Invasive species ftl. :(

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So which store has Steves cold water set-up? I would like to check it out. The tank looks sick by the way, where do you go collecting?

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lol, I think taking the anemones on the airplane would be smuggling - probably not a good thing if you get caught. If. ;)

 

With the nudibranchs, they don't appreciably effect the tunicate population in the wild for a couple reasons: there is tastier fare out there, and the reproduction rate for the tunicates far exceeds that of the nudibranchs. They help, but not enough unfortunately.

 

Definitely try and catch one of the crabs next time you're out, the Powers that Be would be interested for sure. Invasive species ftl. :(

 

Well, I wouldn't want to be smuggling anything. I guess I'll just have to wait for you to buy me one! ;)

 

Too bad the nudi's can't help that much, and yeah, I'm gonna try to go back asap. unfortunately, i have a busy end of the summer ahead of me, the next big low is the very end of July/beginning of August. I get back from my service trip in mexico the 27th, and I'll get down as soon as i can after that. Rather than just trying to hand-catch one, I might make some sort of trap - that might be a lot easier.

 

 

So which store has Steves cold water set-up? I would like to check it out. The tank looks sick by the way, where do you go collecting?

 

Steve's tank is at a store called Saltwater Fanta-Seas. It's on Sandy Blvd, over near the airport. I've collected a lot of places on the Oregon coast - Netarts bay, Newport, Barview, Manzanita, Short Sands Beach, Arch Cape, and Ecola State Park, are all I can think of right now, but there may be a few others.

 

-Jamie

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Update you're thread then! Or at least post a pic here. I need to drool over your pretty red anemones (trade?) :)

 

:lol: I'll see what I can do - they open up at weird times.

 

You find some strawberries and then we trade ;)

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