September 2008 - Yardboy

[thepiccos]

A very nice tank and I found your desription very mature and inspiring. Congratulations for your humble approach and the willingness to learn from nature and observation.

[bluepanda]

Awesome tank yardboy! It makes me want to start one of my own.

[yardboy]

Do it!

The tank has been surprisngly easy to maintain. As you probably notice, it doesn't even have a skimmer, or sump. Weekly water changes, with a slight vacuuming of the sandbed seems to do the trick. One thing I haven't mentioned is the massive population of spaghetti worms that concentrates detritus around their burrows, making it easy to siphon up.

[SbCaes]

ever thoguht about adding in to the display things such as oar grass or manatee grass? to make for a more "natural" look? how are those masked gobies working out for ya anyways? anything prey on them from the florida areas that we might add into our tanks?

 

ie. would a blackcap/ chalk swallow them up? etc etc? and congrats btw.

[yardboy]

Being such small fish, I'm sure there are plenty of things that prey upon them, but nothing in the jetties nano has bothered them. At first, the rusty gobies would pop them if they got too close, but I think that was just territorial disputes. They seem to get along fine now, though they tend not to wander up into the caves and ledges where the rusties hang out. There are still two rogue crabs in the tank, and they'd probably eat them if they got the chance. I've lost several decorative crabs to them, I'm sure. Those b-stards are so sharp, they can tell when you are looking at them and will sidle away, turn your head and they will ease back out. Too crazy. I need to get some sharp pointed spear to stab them with, since they are so fast.

Turtle grass beds occur about a mile away, in very large areas of the bay system that the jetties channel admits into, but none occur anywhere around the jetties that I've seen. I am experimenting with turtle and manatee grass in another tank (which has ended up being a kind of "leftover" tank of things I've tried in the jetties tank but that got too big for it. The Beau gregory that got too aggressive and big is in there (It's a 30 gallon tank) but I've found that the grasses grow very slowly for me at least. I've unfortunately just about run out of room in the jetties tank also, with there being only a small area in the middle with sand on it, which is where the grasses would need to go. I was recently in the Philippines and saw grass beds with brain and elegance corals in them. Now there's the kind of biotope I'd really like to try!

[NanoCube-boy]

Congrats on your tank there. Great job.

 

I have some questions if you don't mind answering.

1. What make you decide to have this Mesican Gulf theme?

2. You said that you chagne additon 15% monthly? How would you do that when you already making 15% water change weekly?

3. How much and often do you feed your tank?

[yardboy]

Congrats on your tank there. Great job.

 

I have some questions if you don't mind answering.

1. What make you decide to have this Mesican Gulf theme?

2. You said that you chagne additon 15% monthly? How would you do that when you already making 15% water change weekly?

3. How much and often do you feed your tank?

Sorry for the delay in answering, I've been out of town.

I started this tank because I live about 5 miles from the jetties that I was trying to emulate. I dive there at least once a week, and often more.

I do a 10-15% water change weekly using artificial (Instant Ocean) sea water. Once a month I use water from the ocean (natural sea water) for a 15% water change to give potential extra plankton for the tan inhabitants to feed on, and also with the chance that some other creature will settle and begin to grow in the tank. No luck yet on that front.

[NanoCube-boy]

Where you get the sea water? In Jetties?

[yardboy]

Yes, I wait for a good high tide and catch the water on the way in, that way it has the least chance of being contaminated with pollution from the bay.

[NanoCube-boy]

nice

[CorvetteJoe]

Congratz!

 

I was just up in PC over labor day .We didn't get to do any boating/snorkeling because of the dang hurricane though I was going to explore the jetties while I was there. Oh well. Maybe next time.

 

Your tank is looking awesome.

[yardboy]

Too bad on the timing Dude. It was nice afterwards when the silt settled. I'm going this weekend to see if anything is left. The temp. is dropping and critters are starting to migrate away. I'll keep snorkeling this year until I just can't stand it so I can see what type population progressions there are over the winter.

[enesess]

I'm inspired by your aquascaping. The curved path creates a cool trench look. I plan on creating a similiar look now when I upgrade to a 40g.

[yardboy]

Thanks! I was inspired by an arrangement of rocks at the jetties and later found that it's a method in landscaping to give the illusion of a larger space. Very useful in a nano. You might want to look here for another tank that uses a similar element. I've been wondering what you could do with an even smaller AIO tank with that design. Carefully chosen corals to maintain scale might turn out very cool.

Good luck with yours and keep me posted, I'd love to see it. A larger tank like the 40 you are planning will likely work much better than a smaller one to maintain the scale and give the feeling you could swim right through it.