5 gallon shell reef project 😉

[CD_Scapes]

Inspiration:

Specific species or related species were found using this website as an example of what can be found in “shell reefs” 

http://portphillipmarinelife.net.au/search?searchType=Species

Gadgets and Hardscape:

Tank- Marineland Contour 5 gallon 

Light- Aquaknight LED

Heater- 10 watt slim heater

Pump- Stock pump

Filtration- Filter floss and Biomatrix

Hardscape

Rock- Live rock

Sand- Bimini pink

Shells- Mussel clusters

 

Livestock:

 

Potential Fish:

Tailspot blenny

 

Invertebrates:

CUC: Nerite snail, Virgin nerites, Nassarius, Dwarf hermit, Dwarf planaxis, Emerald crab, Scarlet hermit, Trochus snail

Green porcelain crabs

Micro decorator crab

Saron shrimp

Plating sponge

Tube worms

 

Coral & Friends:

Blue clove

Zoas

Kenya tree

 

Macroalgae:

Green:

Caulerpa sp.

Bryopsis

Red:

Pink cotton candy algae

Bryothamnion

Hetereosiphona gibessii

Rigid coralline

Fine coralline

Brown:

Dictyota sp.

 

 

[CD_Scapes]

Reserved

[Tired]

Ooh, I'm intrigued!

 

Doesn't sargassum need super bright light, though? Your other life may object. 

 

I would be concerned about the camel shrimp eating your corals, and the shrimp in general (but especially the ghost shrimp) eating the slug. And some things that go by "ghost shrimp" in the hobby can be very aggressive towards other shrimp, to the point of killing and eating them.

[Bailyfox]

I'm loving this concept for a tank, I love oddball stuff.

[CD_Scapes]

Just now, Tired said:

Ooh, I'm intrigued!

 

Doesn't sargassum need super bright light, though? Your other life may object. 

 

I would also be considered about the camel shrimp eating your corals, and the shrimp in general (but especially the ghost shrimp) eating the slug. And some things that go by "ghost shrimp" in the hobby can be very aggressive towards other shrimp, to the point of killing and eating them.

Yeah I thought about it the sargassum, and the camel shrimp are off the list, I was looking at the ghost shrimp too and I've decided to go with saron shimp instead. I also found my source of shells for the tank too, there is an Etsy shop with thousands of shells to choose from and I'm getting some from tannin aquatics too. I'm excited to watch this tank progress, although I will warn anyone who is following. This will be a very slow project with my college budget

[Bailyfox]

1 minute ago, Northwoodsreefer said:

Yeah I thought about it the sargassum, and the camel shrimp are off the list, I was looking at the ghost shrimp too and I've decided to go with saron shimp instead. I also found my source of shells for the tank too, there is an Etsy shop with thousands of shells to choose from and I'm getting some from tannin aquatics too. I'm excited to watch this tank progress, although I will warn anyone who is following. This will be a very slow project with my college budget

Will you be getting any live bivalves?

[CD_Scapes]

3 minutes ago, Bailyfox said:

Will you be getting any live bivalves?

I will most likely not as my college schedule would not be the greatest to care for live bivalves as well as the small water volume

[billygoat]

Hm, interesting! Oyster reefs are home to a huge variety of beautiful macroalgae, but they are temperate-water environments; the website you linked above shows species from Melbourne, Australia, where the water temperature peaks at around 65 degrees in the summertime. Do you plan to model a similar environment using tropical species? It's a very intriguing idea. 🤔 As far as I know there are no reef-building bivalves common to tropical regions, so I am not sure what such a project would end up looking like. I guess we will find out! 😁

 

I'll be following along of course! 👌

[Tired]

I'm from Texas, and I don't actually know if we're technically considered tropical, but we have oysters. Some of those oysters live in very shallow areas (think mangroves or mangrove-adjacent) where the water feels outright warm if you go in it in the summer. The sun heats things up fast. Which is, in a lovely twist of fate for those who like to wade, great for growing flesh-eating bacteria on those very sharp oystershells! 

[CD_Scapes]

December 14th, 2019:

I've been looking at shell types all night and after looking at my inspiration I noticed that the shells were generally flat and wide with little ribbing, while looking on the etsy page I found the Pink rose tellina shell. This shell will make the perfect main structure as it's not too big (a trend I noticed about the other shells) and its the right "type", I also purple coquina which are microshells that will be perfect accent clusters. Another place I looked was Tannin aquatics who has the Donacidae shells, they are a bit smaller than the pink rose but have the same general shape. The last thing I saw was a caribbean thorny shell, I might get one for astetic or I might not, depends on how I feel😄

 

Here are what the shells look like:

Pink rose tellina

Purple coquina

Donacidae 

[CD_Scapes]

17 minutes ago, billygoat said:

Hm, interesting! Oyster reefs are home to a huge variety of beautiful macroalgae, but they are temperate-water environments; the website you linked above shows species from Melbourne, Australia, where the water temperature peaks at around 65 degrees in the summertime. Do you plan to model a similar environment using tropical species? It's a very intriguing idea. 🤔 As far as I know there are no reef-building bivalves common to tropical regions, so I am not sure what such a project would end up looking like. I guess we will find out! 😁

 

I'll be following along of course! 👌

I'm taking the "oyster reef" idea, using the picture as inspiration and using all tropical species to complete the looks. It's a bit complex but I think I'll get small rocks to make the shell "reefs" and use the tropical substitutes for what would be found at the Australian port

 

4 minutes ago, Tired said:

I'm from Texas, and I don't actually know if we're technically considered tropical, but we have oysters. Some of those oysters live in very shallow areas (think mangroves or mangrove-adjacent) where the water feels outright warm if you go in it in the summer. The sun heats things up fast. Which is, in a lovely twist of fate for those who like to wade, great for growing flesh-eating bacteria on those very sharp oystershells! 

Sort of tropical...I'm saying "shell reef" because I feel oysters could be too large and ruin the scale

[Tired]

Oh, you're trying to make a miniature version? I think you'd need miniature macros and livestock to pull that off, otherwise it'd look really strange. Like a dollhouse with out-of-scale dolls. Or the texture of the shells might get lost amidst the macros and general algae growth, and hard to see from any notable distance.

 

I think you might be better off with a clump of larger shells. Say a couple dozen oystershells, arranged into their component pairs, to make one large centerpiece. Like what this guy did. https://reefkeeping.com/forums/showthread.php?s=e5d73063cc531b46878215389061c806&t=839286&page=8

[CD_Scapes]

6 minutes ago, Tired said:

Oh, you're trying to make a miniature version? I think you'd need miniature macros and livestock to pull that off, otherwise it'd look really strange. Like a dollhouse with out-of-scale dolls. Or the texture of the shells might get lost amidst the macros and general algae growth, and hard to see from any notable distance.

 

I think you might be better off with a clump of larger shells. Say a couple dozen oystershells, arranged into their component pairs, to make one large centerpiece. Like what this guy did. https://reefkeeping.com/forums/showthread.php?s=e5d73063cc531b46878215389061c806&t=839286&page=8

Yeah, I’ll think about how I’m going about this more. Maybe the larger shells is the way to go. Also that’s the true aquarium inspiration for the project. Yes a nice guy (the thread starter) I’ve talked to him before about this idea

[Bailyfox]

31 minutes ago, Northwoodsreefer said:

Yeah, I’ll think about how I’m going about this more. Maybe the larger shells is the way to go. Also that’s the true aquarium inspiration for the project. Yes a nice guy (the thread starter) I’ve talked to him before about this idea

I think some larger shells would help keep them visible among the macros as well.

[CD_Scapes]

1 hour ago, Bailyfox said:

I think some larger shells would help keep them visible among the macros as well.

Well, I guess larger shells it is. I'm trying to find a shell that is large but not sure I want oyster shells. Maybe I'll order like a single pair of shells and see which one I like the most then I would order more of the specific shell.

Top 5 species:

Paphia rotundata shells

Black pen shells

Lima lima shells

Turkey wing shells

Purple gari elondata shells

[MainelyReefer]

6 hours ago, Northwoodsreefer said:

Sort of tropical...I'm saying "shell reef" because I feel oysters could be too large and ruin the scale

https://www.reefcleaners.org/aquarium-store/cross-barred-venus-clam

i ordered some small bivalves from reefcleaners, when I ordered I think they were 15 cent oysters they were unbelievably tiny and a few have even gone on to grow from the size of a pencil eraser to the size of a dime almost.  Those 80 cent clams on offer now actually look very similar, assuming they are that size they would be perfect to scale it down and easy to get a large population.  The few that are growing best are in my 2.5g Dropoff and I don’t feed them specifically but do occasionally broadcast reefroids.

[CD_Scapes]

2 hours ago, GraniteReefer said:

https://www.reefcleaners.org/aquarium-store/cross-barred-venus-clam

i ordered some small bivalves from reefcleaners, when I ordered I think they were 15 cent oysters they were unbelievably tiny and a few have even gone on to grow from the size of a pencil eraser to the size of a dime almost.  Those 80 cent clams on offer now actually look very similar, assuming they are that size they would be perfect to scale it down and easy to get a large population.  The few that are growing best are in my 2.5g Dropoff and I don’t feed them specifically but do occasionally broadcast reefroids.

Okay, maybe I could get some live small bivalves 

[Bailyfox]

 

8 hours ago, GraniteReefer said:

https://www.reefcleaners.org/aquarium-store/cross-barred-venus-clam

i ordered some small bivalves from reefcleaners, when I ordered I think they were 15 cent oysters they were unbelievably tiny and a few have even gone on to grow from the size of a pencil eraser to the size of a dime almost.  Those 80 cent clams on offer now actually look very similar, assuming they are that size they would be perfect to scale it down and easy to get a large population.  The few that are growing best are in my 2.5g Dropoff and I don’t feed them specifically but do occasionally broadcast reefroids.

I'm definitely going to have to get some of those once my tank is more mature.

[CD_Scapes]

6 minutes ago, Bailyfox said:

 

I'm definitely going to have to get some of those once my tank is more mature.

I was thinking of getting a couple too

[Bailyfox]

54 minutes ago, Northwoodsreefer said:

I was thinking of getting a couple too

You should see if you can get some small feather dusters too, they are super cool.

[CD_Scapes]

December 15th, 2019:

I finally figured out that direction I want this tank to look like, the idea is a cluster or rocks loaded with mussel shells, barnacle shells and other shells. Maybe I could try to get some live bivalves or barnacles to grow. I have a friend out in Cali who mentioned he has seen many dead/dried out mussel clusters and he could possibly ship them my way if needed. I found inspiration in these pictures, If I go this route I might end up keeping the tank at a lower temp (74-76) and maybe get a pygmy filefish. 

 

[Tired]

If you get him to ship you dead clusters, you'd better have a bucket ready to cycle them in. Those are gonna come in loaded with material that's going to start rotting when it gets wet. It'll rot itself off and be fine, but you'll have to put them in something that does NOT contain desirable life (or resign yourself to massive daily water changes) until it comes off. Like how people cycle dead rock. 

 

Check if there are any seafood joints near you, or grocery stores that sell whole, live or frozen bivalves. You can buy ones from the grocery store, eat 'em (the ones you can buy are too large to maintain in such a tiny tank for any length of time), and use the shells, or you can ask a local seafood restaurant for their empties.

[CD_Scapes]

6 minutes ago, Tired said:

If you get him to ship you dead clusters, you'd better have a bucket ready to cycle them in. Those are gonna come in loaded with material that's going to start rotting when it gets wet. It'll rot itself off and be fine, but you'll have to put them in something that does NOT contain desirable life (or resign yourself to massive daily water changes) until it comes off. Like how people cycle dead rock. 

 

Check if there are any seafood joints near you, or grocery stores that sell whole, live or frozen bivalves. You can buy ones from the grocery store, eat 'em (the ones you can buy are too large to maintain in such a tiny tank for any length of time), and use the shells, or you can ask a local seafood restaurant for their empties.

I was planning on doing the curing process with the clusters after I get them 

[Tired]

That's your best plan. Or, hell, use it to cycle your tank, two birds with one stone and all that. But if you do cycle that way, you'd have to do water changes pretty frequently to keep the ammonia from getting high enough to potentially harm your nitrifying bacteria.

[CD_Scapes]

1 hour ago, Tired said:

That's your best plan. Or, hell, use it to cycle your tank, two birds with one stone and all that. But if you do cycle that way, you'd have to do water changes pretty frequently to keep the ammonia from getting high enough to potentially harm your nitrifying bacteria.

I could do that too yeah