75g Humboldt Bay biotope...re-done!

[Mynameskenny19]

Ok, change of plans for the flora! We're going to take out the Caulerpa since its pretty much dying and we're adding an easier-to-take-care-of plant to the tank: eel grass. We're thinking about putting a big wall of it in the back of the tank with a sand dune in the left side of the tank and a rocky outcropping on the right with an open sandy area in the middle. We took the rock fish out and put them back in the bay after we fed them and now we just have the devil fish and out sand fish lol.

[tyty22]

wow you have some really cool fish the "devil fish" and sand fish are awesome.

 

i think if you were to make like a corner box out of egg crate and pvc and cover it in rocks you could make a really cool drop off

[squirrelieygrrrl]

hey kenny,

 

i just read your build and i think its awesome! nice to see another humboldt reefer on here. i had a similar idea to take critters out of the tide pools down here in shelter cove, and do a sort of outside sunlight tide pool biotope thing...lol, sorry i was having a hard time explaining my self. very neat tank, ill be following along for sure!

 

~squirrel

[Mynameskenny19]

Yeah, thanks guys! Man, I was startin to think nobody was interested in this thread anymore

A drop off would be cool, but why spend money on the egg crate and pvc when you can just find a cool rock and put it in the sand? My brother just caught a baby ling cod today and we put him in the tank. He's [retty awesome looking, almost rivals the devil fish in coolness! lol. Another thing, we tried a chiller made out of my mini fridge in my room, but it doesnt work too well. I also took out the 3 big bushs of Caulerpa you saw in there since they were dying and in a few days we're going to get large clumps of eel grass and make a wall in the back of it.

 

And thanks for the comment squirrelieygrrrl! You ever come up to eureka area??? And have you seen the reptile tanks that are like 24"x24"x8"?? If so, you should get one and take out all the reptile stuff and make it a bare tank, fill with 3/4" of sand, some rocks on top, fill with water from the ocean and go tidepoolin'!!!

Thats what we usually do every weekend, but without the cool reptile tank lol.

 

I'll have some more pics on wednesday.

[squirrelieygrrrl]

your totally welcome. we come up about once a month for grocery shopping (so hum is too expensive) i love to peruse fins and feathers up there. theyve got a great store! you ever make it down this far south?

 

as for my tidepool idea i wanted to go a little larger, like possibly one of those black water troughs for cattle. im still working out the kinks on my idea.......

 

cant wait to see the new pics!

 

~squirrel

 

edit: your the first humboldt reefer ive met on here! just thought id throw that in.

[Mynameskenny19]

Yeah, fin and feather is where we got our 75. And nope, Ive never been to where you live, but i do go to California City once a year to ride my dirt bike at Jawbone Canyon and Redrock Canyon since gas is sooo spendy STILL! Im from visalia though. You know where any of those towns are? Anyhoo, back to the subject lol

 

On the tidepool idea...do you want to be able to look through like a fishtank or look from above like an actual tidepool? Either way, you should make yourself a Surge Device to recreate the natural "tide" affect. But since surge tanks fill up and dump every couple of minutes, hook up a SMALL pump with airline tubing to send the water up to the surge tank very slowly like every 7 hours just like the real tides! Then instead of a "surge", make it more like a trickle or drip back into the tank. Another thing, put the small pump on a timer for 7 hours on, 7 hours off. Sorry if im blabbing on and on and that i pretty much jacked your idea, just gotta type the idea down before i forget lol.

 

and im working on a 20g long tank right now and its gonna be pretty cool. not gonna say what my idea is though cuz i dont want anybody doing it before ME. lol

 

and so are you! didnt think this site had any "humboldtians" on here! lol

[squirrelieygrrrl]

lol, yup i know where all those places are. fin and feathers rocks! .....

 

lol, thats essentially my idea, but i wanted to some how gravity feed it down to the holding tank......but above view like in nature. thanks for giving me some more ideas on the project tho! no one could jack my idea, cuz the critters come from my front yard. lol, so no worries!

 

phew at least im not the only one any more.....

[Mynameskenny19]

How about this: Depending on the size of your display tank, set up a tide system on the ratio of 3:2 with 3 being the the volume of water of your display and 2 the volume of the holding tank thingy. slowly pump water from display to holding tank, figure some way for your pump to pump just a little slower than your siphon and siphon water from the hold tank to your display with airline tubing. put the airline tubing intake towards the top of the holding tank and when the water gets to the certain point, automatic siphon starts somehow and siphons water back to your display. I dont know how that can work yet, but ill figure it out tonight or tomorrow and let ya know in a way more simplified way. And i live in samoa, cali so i have ocean about 400 yards from my house and humboldt bay about 300 yards from my house and have water on 3 sides of my house pretty much. and same here, almost thought i'd be the only humboldtian on here for a long while!!!

[squirrelieygrrrl]

lol wow,

 

thanks for the ideas! im more of a visual person, so im having a hard time wrapping my head around that. im still working out the kinks on my 10 gal, the tide pool idea is gonna take some time

 

lol. i know exactly where samoa is.

 

small world, as the saying goes.

 

shelter cove is just west of redway.

[Mynameskenny19]

yup, small world haha.

yeah, we're still tweaking our 75 too.

ill PM you my idea for the 20g long since i dont want anybody to know about it, but i give you a peek lol.

[squirrelieygrrrl]

i feel all special now!

[Mynameskenny19]

WoooHoooooo!!!! Yeah! Well, since Im going to be a Junior in highschool on monday, I just recieved my report card!!!! Yay!!!! So, I have only 70 credits i need to graduate high school and im gonna be a junior!

In my sophomore year, i did 185.5 credits that year!!! so now i dont have to do much! Im gonna get me a job and go to school only 3 periods a day! Hooorrraaaay me!

 

Ok, now for the tank stuff. Ok, so we didnt get the eel grass cuz it wasnt a low enough tide and the water is pretty cold still. So, im going to get me some suspenders and put them on my waders my dad just got me and when we get a low enough tide, we're going to go get us some eel grass.

Our ling cod died because our hermits all ganged up on him while he was in his cave and they killed him and ate him, so we threw what was left of him out. Our tank looks pretty simple now.

[squirrelieygrrrl]

congrats on school kenny!

 

bummer bout your fish. i guess thats incentive to get another or something different! good luck on the eel grass collecting. you might want to think about joining NCNRS. its for all of us nor cal reefers. hope ya have a great first day on mon. take care.

 

best regards

~squirrel

[Mynameskenny19]

Thanks squirrely'jen! lol

Yeah, we replaced the ling with a baby halibut [shhhhhhh!]. and tomorrow around 5 am we're going collecting for some stuff in the bay. And I'll have an awesome day at school monday. So til then, later.

[Mynameskenny19]

Yeah, so Im uploading new pictures right now into photobucket, but its gonna be about 5 minutes til i get them here cuz my computer is slow. But the good thing is that I finally figured out how to get pics of the stuff in my tank! Now that I can, Ive gotten some pics of the cool stuff that Ive been waiting for!

So, just wait a few and Ill have em up.

[squirrelieygrrrl]

chop chop kenny!

[Mynameskenny19]

Ok, here they are! First off, here's a pic of our ling cod that we had for a few days:

 

Here's our biggest red rock crab and if you look carefully at bottom-right, you'll see a bit of our halibut.

 

And these next 2 pics are of the anenomes that Ive collected recently.

 

Close-up of our red rock crab a few days after he molted:

 

Baby halibut:

 

Close-up of the bundle of "goodies" that i got last weekend:

 

In this pic youll see our rock fish, shiner perch, the devil fish, a large 6" oyster and a large 8" muscle:

 

Here's our oyster surrounded by anenomes:

 

Here's my favorite pic of all! I dont know what it is, but the anenomes always die if they touch it!

 

Here's the hangout spot where all the critters [not fish] hang out:

 

Rock shot:

 

A pic of our "garden" along with a very blurry pic of this flat looking worm thing on the glass:

 

One of our starfish eating barnacles off the rock that we replace often for them:

 

Just had to put in a shiner perch shot, but they swim too fast when I bring up the camera cuz theyre shy lol:

 

Last but not least, here's our FTS so far. We havent had a good enough low tide to get some eelgrass, that's all i got so far.

 

 

Well, hope you enjoy the new pics! Please comment on them. Thanks and see ya!

[Mynameskenny19]

Here's some major Bump-idge dude braheim!

[jeremai]

It's coming along great!

 

Now that you have all the inverts, how are you feeding them? The anemones are fairly easy, but I'm interested in the foods you chose for the bivalves.

[Mynameskenny19]

You know jeremai, it is a lot of work but heres how we feed them and everything else:

 

We do water changes. But not ordinary water changes, we go out to the bay with 5 gallon buckets and lids, fill them up with bay water, put a lid on them, and carry them all the way back to our house. we do 10g a week to feed the muscles and oysters. Right now, our light is enough and maybe a lil too much for our shellfish since they live in the bay. The muscles live under the dock where theres harldy any sunlight and the oysters live in the mud with light to moderate light. We're waiting for some good plankton blooms out here in the bay cuz sometimes when they do come, we collect around 40g at a time and feed it to them.

They seem happy, so thats all that matters i guess. All that water is food for the bivalves, for our plants, anenomes, and its our water change too. Later though, we're going to try to feed the stuff with cyclopeeze and stuff like that. What do you think we should feed them? Our crabs eat anything left over, anenomes get hand fed guppies, our red plate fire coral thing eats our anenomes, our crabs also eat some of our fish that die, our star fish eat barnacles on rock that we replace once a week, all of our fish eat the same stuff: frozen brine shrimp cubes, guppies, minnows, chopped up shrimp, anchovies, and krill.

 

Sorry for the long reply, but that pretty much sums it up.

Any other questions, feel free to ask.

[Mynameskenny19]

Bump...again...hmm, my thread is just getting boring now. What if i said the was a shark in it?! haha

[JustinBC29]

You must be from the pacific northwest. Im from port angeles where abouts are you? Are you sure thats not just a flownder it could be either but still cool. To anyone that dosent know exactly what a halubit is here is a link to a picture that shows how big they can realy get. http://paradoxoff.com/files/2007/10/bigges...ibut-caught.jpg

We ussaly shoot them in the head and kill them before we put them in the boat or else they will flop around and break the inside of the boat Iv seen another tank like this before i cant find the link sorry, but there are some realy cool and colorful things you can aquire..

[Mynameskenny19]

You must be from the pacific northwest. Im from port angeles where abouts are you? Are you sure thats not just a flownder it could be either but still cool. To anyone that dosent know exactly what a halubit is here is a link to a picture that shows how big they can realy get. http://paradoxoff.com/files/2007/10/bigges...ibut-caught.jpg

We ussaly shoot them in the head and kill them before we put them in the boat or else they will flop around and break the inside of the boat Iv seen another tank like this before i cant find the link sorry, but there are some realy cool and colorful things you can aquire..

Yes I am Justin. Where's Port Angeles at? Oregon or Washington? Anyhoo, Im sure its a halibut. Its actually a baby halibut! We saw it swim around earlier and it still has a little bit of an egg sack still attached to its underside! Pretty awesome! We've seen an 81 lbs. Alaskan Halibut break a 12 Klamath boat before! Now that was AWESOME!!!!! Oh I almost forgot to tell you, Im from Northern California. Yup, Samoa, Humboldt County, California.

[squirrelieygrrrl]

lookin great kenny,

 

 

i especially like the nems and that orange thing! very cool. lol, alot of the inverts we have out here in the cove too!

[Mynameskenny19]

Thanks!

Yeah, took me about an hours' worth of taking pictures with my camera to get the exact settings i wanted and now that ive done that, im pretty proud of myself lol. NO camera can beat me!

 

Stupid person's question, but is Shelter Cove actually sheltered or did some drunk guy in the 1900's name it?