Yardboy's Jetties Nano

[Needreefunds]

I've never known one that wouldn't bite when they got hungry. And they need to be fed three times a day!!!

And while it may prove difficult at times to do in the "wild", fragging becomes easier after acclimating to life at home.

Some more than others.

 

Some expect it. Some demand it .

 

( just an observation mind you ).

[yardboy]

You won't hear me complaining! I do it for the love of nature, in it's many manifestations.

[yardboy]

Wow! I like the fish in the second picture! Where did you get one of those? Do they do good in captivity? Are they hard to care for? Do you think you can catch me one of those? I'll pay shipping.

Those come from the coral center of diversity in the Indo-Pacific. All the reefs there are close to shore, so they are very much used to the presence of man. Under the right conditions they can thrive, but they are more challenging to care for than any other creature I know of. They require a tremendous amount of acclimitization, often requiring the aquarist to visit their home reef and slowly get them used to their new caretaker. Many fail in their attempts to captive raise them. They can only be captured by the one who will raise them and as a result the shipping costs are high. Final price? Your heart and your soul, and most of your money.

[yardboy]

Inspired by Diane, I finally was able to get a decent shot of an amphipod (or something) on the glass of the jetties nano. At the same time I show how lazy I can be at times about cleaning the glass. IT got like this after ahhhhh.........acouple of weeks. How embarassing.

 

[Mr. Fosi]

Looks like that may be an isopod; the favorable kind.

[c est ma]

Yep! And look at all the copepods around it! Sweet pic!

 

Your glass just looks like a healthy marine tank. Think of all the life we "relocate" when we scrape.

 

-Diane

 

Edit: Probably a Munnid isopod:

 

http://home2.pacific.net.ph/~sweetyummy42/hitchpods.html

[Lalani]

Great macro shot.

[SeeDemTails]

Awesome tank, quite inspiring for someone who lives less than 5 minutes from the Ponce De Leon Inlet jetties in Daytona Beach!

[yardboy]

Thanks guys, for the info and the great links. At least ya'll didn't castigate me as bad as Shimek would have! The "pods" have been in this tank since its birth. Not every tank I've set up has the same reaction to scraping the glass Diane. It's like "DINNERTIME!" with all polyps popping.

SDT, going snorkeling and diving at the jetties made it impossible not to set up this tank, if I wanted to "keep faith" with the hobby

Thanks again Diane for the encouragement using extra lens. Now I've got to find me a loupe with more magnification!

[yardboy]

Hey Guys!

I've had some success groiwng Nannochloropsis algae and L-strain rotifers. Apparently something good is coming out of those vats, as this is the reaction I get when I filter some and feed it to the tank!

 

It's been exactly a month since I took a picture of the sps coral that hitchhiked into the jetties. I'm really surprised at its growth rate, considering that it's under 2-36W PC, one 10000K and one 50/50 actinic/10000K.

 

4/4/08

 

 

5/4/08

 

 

Unfortunately the sweet little red tunicates and yellow encrusting sponge died back. Not sure what they didn't like.

[bluenassarius]

nice growth on the sps!

[c est ma]

Gee, I must have let the May 4th notification scroll away (if I ever got it in the first place ). Sweet pics! Congrats on getting the rotifers going--are they much work? And are they just for corals, or are you hoping to raise some gobies some day?

 

That hitcher is so cool, and doing so well--but then, hitchers are usually hardy and robust. The irregular polyp arrangement always strikes me! Still thinking it's a monti of some kind?

 

Hey, BTW, I just got my Veron's set! Marine Depot is having a 25%-off-all-books sale, so I couldn't resist!

 

...Be back in a few years....

 

 

--Diane

[yardboy]

Thanks Blue. Prompted me to take a few more pictures. It's really growing rapidly.

Diane, I'm sorry if I got you hooked! After you've went through them a few times (say, like 50) you'll begin to have at least an idea of which families are in which volume so you can get to what you want to look at quicker! After you read the chapter on distribution don't be too envious that I'm going next month practically to the middle of the Indo-Pacific Center of Diversity!

 

Here's the coral on 5/17

 

I think this is the "owned" shot. Using a baster to get that bit of detritus off his surface, the polyps retracted revealing the pattern on his skeleton and the purple rim. Pretty definitive of a Montipora. Doubtful of any Atlantic coral anyway, it's growing so fast, they usually don't.

 

[yardboy]

The jetties marks the eastern terminus of Panama City Beach, a nearly twenty mile long stretch of white sand. Genie and I enjoy walking along the last mile of beach before the jetties, protected by the State Park. It’s particularly pleasant early in the morning before the crush of tourists appear. The long stretch of sand beckoning from beyond the dunes feels almost biblical in the early light

 

 

 

 

 

The waves wash up onto the sand, bringing all manner of material representation of the great Gulf beyond.

 

 

As we walk along, pausing to pick up new hermit crab homes or abandoned barnacle clusters, I wonder if there’s some pattern written in the chaos of the sand at our feet, and I’m reminded of a quote by Isaac Newton,

"I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore,

and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble

or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth

lay all undiscovered before me."

 

People travel to the ocean’s edge to find something; the distant horizon, the ocean hissing at the foot of the land, glimpses of what lies under the waves beyond the beach, but I wonder if they also think of it as a burial ground, with the remains of individual creatures who by luck or genetics didn't have what it takes to survive. It’s also a dump heap, where a big bell jellyfish pulsing feebly on the shore is just the cast off husk of an individual who successfully survived his life journey and then in one last feat casts the dice of his species future into the sea and then washes ashore, his game done.

Today as we walked along, we discovered a third aspect of the beach, as the frontline in the struggle for survival. The idea is constantly placed in our awareness. The new religion of science has preached that if we'd only been more pious, made sacrifices to the proper gods, lived our lives a different way, a better way, this all wouldn't be happening. The natural world is changing, it will no longer be the same as we remember. Lives are altered, species disappear. Sea levels rise, shorelines change. Suggestions are made that the whole world will be lost. What we saw as we walked along the beach was hope. A realization that while the natural world may not be aware of our effect or responsibility, what's happening now isn't anything that nature hasn't seen before. As the waves wash in, they carry the propagules of possibility.

[yardboy]

 

 

Maybe it's a stretch to see so much in a mangrove washing ashore, but the northernmost extent of their habitat is nearly 200 miles further south. The beach was littered with them, with no chance of survival. Global warming or not, it still gets too cold for mangroves on Panama City Beach. Amazing too, that after such a long journey, the props were green and stiff, with roots and leaves already beginning to bud out.

I recall another line, written by John Steinbeck while sailing aboard a biological collection vessel in another Gulf, of California:

There would seem to be only one commandment for living things: Survive!

This commandment decrees the death and destruction of myriads of individuals for the survival of the whole.

The mangroves suggest to me that at least they don't think the world will end anytime soon.

 

And being the conscientious aquarist, I gathered up at least 50 of the propagules. No reason to let so much possibility go to waste! Anyone interested in a mangrove?!

 

After such a heady walk, we ended up at the jetties where we watched, with no deeper meaning, a school of manta rays, working the shallows along the lagoon where dense congregations of fish larvae were trying their best to survive another day.

[Mr. Fosi]

I like the prose.

 

I'm interested in a mangrove if you're interested in another colt frag.

[johnmaloney]

I don't know if you got an answer already, but the spongy green macroalgae you have with the halimeda is codium.

[Mudfish]

Excellent.

[c est ma]

Eloquent essays with beautiful pics! Thank you, Roger. Most thought-provoking and mood-evoking.

 

 

 

 

Also, for some reason, reminded me of one of my favorite cartoons:

 

 

(Feel free to delete that if you'd rather not have a cartoon in your thread!!)

 

I don't envision having a mangrove sized 'fuge anytime in the near or not-so-near future, but if you've got a surplus on your hands...do you think they'd survive in something like a plastic tub with SW & substrate, maybe an airstone if necessary, in front of a window? If all those conditions apply, I'd be happy to buy a few, but only if you have no better use/customer for them!

 

--Diane

[yardboy]

You are so funny Diane. How could anyone have a better "customer" than you! As for the cartoon, it lends the thread an air of scientific respectability it doesn't deserve! God, I remember Graduate Seminar in school. I don't think I ever gave a talk without a cartoon to get across the salient points!

For the mangroves, here's a link to the possibilities in rearing. I can't believe I'd never searched that particular pattern for information. I discovered a whole "Mangrovian subculture" that I think I'll immerse myelf in for awhile. On our trip to the Phils next month we're staying on Apo Island which specifically mentions that they have a mangrove island nearby for snorkeling. Can't Wait!

[dshnarw]

You are so funny Diane. How could anyone have a better "customer" than you! As for the cartoon, it lends the thread an air of scientific respectability it doesn't deserve! God, I remember Graduate Seminar in school. I don't think I ever gave a talk without a cartoon to get across the salient points!

 

So true!! I just gave my first grad talk at UMd...must have cartoons (or, at minimum, funny and embarrassing photos of the profs...of course, that's notsomuch for salient points as it is for making precursory jabs for their ensuing questions post-talk).

[c est ma]

LOL!

 

Ah, those were the days...

 

I remember when our department herpetologist gave a seminar entitled "What it's like to be a lizard." We were doing some mark-recapture work with butterflies at the time, and SO wanted to respond with our own seminar: "What it's like to be a satyr and a nymph."

 

But I digress...

 

--D

[JPF]

People travel to the ocean’s edge to find something; the distant horizon, the ocean hissing at the foot of the land, glimpses of what lies under the waves beyond the beach, but I wonder if they also think of it as a burial ground, with the remains of individual creatures who by luck or genetics didn't have what it takes to survive.

This is why I kayak. To find something new, catch a glimpse and share it.

What we saw as we walked along the beach was hope.

This is why I garden. Gardening is hope. Hope that next year will be a little better than the last. Reefing is gardening under glass. I feel the same hopes each time I maintain my tank. Hope that the next will be better than the last. It always is.

[yardboy]

So happy to see that someone else relates gardening to reefing. I always consider my training in reefing to have begun with my gardening, and many of the reefers I know also have well-tended yards and gardens.

When I try and explain the connection I usually end up stammering out that "I just llike growing things".

Thanks so much for helping to put it into a better form!

And now for a somewhat unrelated aside, I discovered a miscalculation by the local landscaping company "RockWorld" where they'd bought a load of quarried "OysterRock", actually quarried limerock. It's what's used for aquaculturing rock down here in Florida. Beautiful fossilized seabed, full of shell patterns, even crinoids. Since it hadn't moved since they'd bought it, they were willing to sell it cheap, 5.5 cents/#

I bought $11 worth! I tested it for pH changes in water and also did a total phosphate test (acid reflux to completely dissolve the phosphate) and found it to be 25% of the level in Carib-Sea oolitic sand right out of the bag. Can't see any problems with it at all.

[Mr. Fosi]

So are you going to try AQing it yourself or will you save it for base rock?