nanoreef-R Posted May 26, 2010 Share Posted May 26, 2010 So what are your waterchanges like? Link to comment
Spilo26 Posted May 26, 2010 Share Posted May 26, 2010 Very nice, the flouder is crazy lol. Link to comment
Zo0k365 Posted May 26, 2010 Author Share Posted May 26, 2010 So what are your waterchanges like? The water changes were fine. I'm like a two minute drive away from the Nauset Estuary (really clean water) so whenever I need to I just drive down with a 5 gallon bucket. This year I'm actually going to hang a 150 watt mh in a mini wooden (shingled like the house) enclosure I made. Link to comment
animalmaster6 Posted May 27, 2010 Share Posted May 27, 2010 That's awesome you're setting up a new tank. I still want to set up a Cape Cod Biotope too lol. Link to comment
KMG Posted May 28, 2010 Share Posted May 28, 2010 I like it! And I covet that huge stand of codium--I love macros. It's funny seeing a baby bluefish; I grew up in Florida and I remember us locals warning tourists not to go in the water while the blues were running. They come in large schools to feed on bait fish and they'll chomp on anything--fish, surfers, swimmers--in their path. The tourists thought we were crazy, but they'd never seen the feeding frenzy of a huge school of bluefish going after mullet--with a few sharks thrown in to boot. I can vividly remember being at the beach as a kid and seeing the blues and several sharks chasing the baitfish in every swell. Link to comment
Zo0k365 Posted May 28, 2010 Author Share Posted May 28, 2010 Funny story with that! I was surf casting off of Nauset beach and I caught a gorilla bluefish (thats what we call the big ones) and I left it on shore just to kinda die... as I use them as bait for lobster traps. While I was fishing more I look back and see this lady sticking her fingers into the still alive fish's mouth! She was trying to put the bait fish that it threw up on the sand back into it's mouth.... turns out she was like a "super tourist" and thought they didn't have teeth...Shes lucky she didn't lose her fingers! Lol damn tourists... Link to comment
KMG Posted May 28, 2010 Share Posted May 28, 2010 Yeesh. I'll see you your gorilla bluefish story, and raise you one idiot snowbird kid who pitched a rock at a beached Portuguese man o'war--after being repeatedly warned NOT to--and had to be rushed to the emergency room when he got man o'war splatter all over his face. Link to comment
Zo0k365 Posted May 28, 2010 Author Share Posted May 28, 2010 Yeesh. I'll see you your gorilla bluefish story, and raise you one idiot snowbird kid who pitched a rock at a beached Portuguese man o'war--after being repeatedly warned NOT to--and had to be rushed to the emergency room when he got man o'war splatter all over his face. What an intelligent kid..... Haha that sounds like something I'd have done when i was younger. I found an entire dead whale carcass on the beach once! It was to the point that you just couldn't tell it ever was a whale... haha it was huge and disgusting. But the weird thing is that it had absolutely no smell! Link to comment
bhskicker18 Posted June 24, 2010 Share Posted June 24, 2010 Sweet Tank! I have been wanting to do one of Mobile Bay! (Well not exactly Mobile, but Little Lagoon Bay in Gulf Shores, AL) Set up a 75 Gallon with a couple of Pigfish, Pinfish, and a Little trout (Like a Sand Trout), and a Blue Crab....... That would be a great tank! But your is awsome, a Bluefish, Flounder, and a Grouper! Wow! Amazing! Link to comment
animalmaster6 Posted June 24, 2010 Share Posted June 24, 2010 Wow it looks awesome!!! I love the way it's set up. Is the rock from the cape? Have you seen the Gulf Pipefish exhibit at the NE Aquarium? Link to comment
rockhead01 Posted June 24, 2010 Share Posted June 24, 2010 Zook, This tank is awesome! I'm relocating to Boston in August and plan to do a similar set up. How do you get your goodies? Dive? Link to comment
PODPIMP Posted June 24, 2010 Share Posted June 24, 2010 You've got to get a baby striper in there if it's going to be a real cape cod tank Link to comment
Gerber77 Posted June 24, 2010 Share Posted June 24, 2010 Awesome tank, must be a lot of fun. Link to comment
Zo0k365 Posted June 25, 2010 Author Share Posted June 25, 2010 Yeah AM the rock is from the Cape. It's from a pond in the estuary. And no I haven't been there in ages!! I need to get down there soon. Also AM, your inbox is full so here's my response since it answers rockhead's question too. There are a lot of places I go. Mostly out of the Nauset Estuary and occasionally to the bay side of the Cape. If you ever go onto the Cape I'd be happy to point you in the right direction. As far as your area idk. Look for places off shore where there are mussel beds. Small fish, and juvenile fish always congregate there and live with the mussels and the seaweed that is attached to the mussels. There's various different methods really to catching stuff. One investment you can make for catching fish is getting a minnow trap, and using clams as the bait. It seems like all of the small fish react well to crushed mussels. Another is visiting areas at low tide which is sorta obvious. In a lot of areas lifting up rocks (such as the ones in my tank) to find stuff yields some cool stuff. Then theres another method where you just take a net and where there's seaweed (eel grass especially) you run the net along the bottom and it pics up everything. Then sort through it etc etc. You get the hang of this one. The last would be snorkeling with a net, and when I do this I usually keep a dive bag wrapped around my wrist so when I catch something I don't have to go all the way back to my bucket and I can just keep filling it as I go. Lastly I would advise you to get a bucket with a portable aerator. They do wonders for keeping stuff alive. Also lol at the baby striper. The sad thing is I totally would... never caught one under like 9 inches or so, and even those ones are just from fishing for schoolies during the spring. Link to comment
animalmaster6 Posted June 25, 2010 Share Posted June 25, 2010 Thank You!!! That helped a lot! I need to get some stuff Link to comment
rbengal Posted September 12, 2010 Share Posted September 12, 2010 I love your tank! I'm studying marine inverts in New Hampshire so I enjoy these cold water tanks. It looks like that crusty orange stuff you have might be Schizoporella, an encrusting bryozoan. Do you have any closer shots of it? Have you ever seen any nudibranchs on your codium or other macros? They are pretty awesome to watch. Link to comment
Arthur França Posted October 24, 2010 Share Posted October 24, 2010 I really love your tank, is very inspirative fo a new display's!Is very impressionant... New udates? Link to comment
king-killa Posted May 9, 2011 Share Posted May 9, 2011 Are you setting the tank up this year? It was great in the past two summers so I'm sure it would probably be great this year as well! Link to comment
Zo0k365 Posted May 12, 2011 Author Share Posted May 12, 2011 Yeah of course I am. I got a job at the MBL in Woods Hole so I'll be spending a lot of time there this summer however I think I can get this tank up and running too. I'm actually busy setting up a macro tank at the Woods Hole Public aquarium. Fun stuff. When the tank is set up I'll update the thread too . Link to comment
wblackburn Posted June 23, 2011 Share Posted June 23, 2011 Love your tank! Found this while I was surfing for info and planning on doing pretty much the same thing. I just started up an old metaframe tank, and I am doing a cape cod biotope for the summer. So far I have a few pipe fish, a couple of tiny flounder, some rock crabs, some hermit crabs, and some anemone. These are all scavenged from in and around E. Falmouth. My main question for you is about food. I put a lot of crustacean larvae and mantis shrimp in there along with some seaweed. Most my residents seem to like eating the mantis shrimp. What else do you use for food in your tanks? Any other advice on doing a local tank and where/how to find good catches would be most appreciated! Link to comment
lljdma06 Posted June 25, 2011 Share Posted June 25, 2011 Another fun biotope system. I'm really enjoying this section of the forum. Very interesting. It's also cool that it is redone every year. I see more macro this time. Liz Link to comment
Zo0k365 Posted September 3, 2011 Author Share Posted September 3, 2011 Hey guys. As you can see it has been a very busy summer for me. I'm at Uconn studying marine science now. Like I said I worked at the MBL over the summer. I was working 40 hours a week which I didn't mind, but I was also commuting two and a half hours total every day. I never really got to do to much with the tank. I had a couple days where I went crazy with it so I can tell you a little about that excursion. I went and caught three snapper bluefish, all about 4 inches long and was keeping them in the tank. I knew the key to keeping bluefish alive is keeping them moving with lots of water flow and in groups of three or more. I kept them happy by following those rules and by giving them a school of about 30 small silver sides at a time. They would last about four or five days, then they would need more food. Just feeding these blues was keeping me going with so little time. I also had a 28g Oceanic Biocube going with macro algae like codium, red gracilia, ulva, and a couple oddball species. I was keeping all juvenile fish, such as northern puffers, northern king fish, butter fish, sea robins, and eventually mullet. All of these fish were caught off of a dock with a long handled, but small mouthed net in Woods Hole. I might eventually put up some pictures that I took of the tanks when I get a chance. It was all worth it to work at such a place like the MBL, though. I'm only 18, now a freshman at college, and have already worked for NOAA and for the MBL so it's hard to complain. At least I was able to bring my reef tank with me to college -Zach Link to comment
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