My “local tank” started as a slice of my surrounding harbors and bays, specifically East Hampton, NY on the east end of long island, complete with macro algae. The entire process is going to be an experiment.
This all started when my brother and I bought our nephew a 10 gallon tank and we put in some striped killifish and Atlantic silversides for him. I work for my local government and we do some seining and trawling roughly once and month for data collection. We would catch some interesting things and I would bring them over and put them in the tank. All of this sparked my interest in doing a full sized version. This is the account of the process as it takes shape and changes along the way.
This system is now a mixed reef and this is the account of it's changes along the way.
This all started when my brother and I bought our nephew a 10 gallon tank and we put in some striped killifish and Atlantic silversides for him. I work for my local government and we do some seining and trawling roughly once and month for data collection. We would catch some interesting things and I would bring them over and put them in the tank. All of this sparked my interest in doing a full sized version. This is the account of the process as it takes shape and changes along the way.
This system is now a mixed reef and this is the account of it's changes along the way.
In with the new, Out with the old.
Posted 05-20-2009 at 05:43 AM by Beaun
My brother gave me a gift certificate to DrsFosterSmith.com for my birthday, so I figured I would get some Caribbean fish with it. So I went online (LiveAquaria.com) and tryed to see if they had anything that gets brought up here with the gulf stream in the summer. They happened to have Sergeant Majors, which happend to be like $5 each. So I got two of those and 3 mexican Turbos. I tried to check out but found out that I neede to spend $30. So I looked around a little longer and found the Harlequin Bass, which looks cool and stays relatively small. I figured why not.
The fish arrived the next day and i acclimated them. Once in the tank they were doing very well except the cunner was picking on them. I also added a few local hermit crabs which the cunner was picking on. So I finally had to make the decision to rerelease the cunner back. So I brought him down to the harbor I got him from and acclimated him to the water and released him.
So far the Sergean Majors are doing great but the Harlequin Bass isnt eating really. I had got a few sand/grass shrimp when I got the hermit crabs and he eat those quickly, so my plan is to go today after work and get a few more and put them in there for him to eat. It was very cool to watch him take down a couple of live shrimp.
In other news, a few weeks ago my brother and I had mentioned off hand how it would be interesting to have a local species tank in out local Marine Museum. They have a lot of history of our whaling and fishing community. The idea made it to the head of the Historical Society and he thought it was a great idea. So we met last Saturday with someone and were discussing ideas of placement and size and what we can do with it. It looks like we may end up with a tank in the 280g size area. The display, at the largest, could be 72x30x32. Which would be fromt A.G.E. or another cutom tank manufacturer. If we had to keep costs down a little more then an AGA 210 would do fine (72x24x29), but we would really like the added depth of the 30". I've been working on a budget and figure we can do the larger size for between $6,000 and $7,000, or between 5 and 6k for the smaller size. Could be very cool I we get the O.K from the board.
The fish arrived the next day and i acclimated them. Once in the tank they were doing very well except the cunner was picking on them. I also added a few local hermit crabs which the cunner was picking on. So I finally had to make the decision to rerelease the cunner back. So I brought him down to the harbor I got him from and acclimated him to the water and released him.
So far the Sergean Majors are doing great but the Harlequin Bass isnt eating really. I had got a few sand/grass shrimp when I got the hermit crabs and he eat those quickly, so my plan is to go today after work and get a few more and put them in there for him to eat. It was very cool to watch him take down a couple of live shrimp.
In other news, a few weeks ago my brother and I had mentioned off hand how it would be interesting to have a local species tank in out local Marine Museum. They have a lot of history of our whaling and fishing community. The idea made it to the head of the Historical Society and he thought it was a great idea. So we met last Saturday with someone and were discussing ideas of placement and size and what we can do with it. It looks like we may end up with a tank in the 280g size area. The display, at the largest, could be 72x30x32. Which would be fromt A.G.E. or another cutom tank manufacturer. If we had to keep costs down a little more then an AGA 210 would do fine (72x24x29), but we would really like the added depth of the 30". I've been working on a budget and figure we can do the larger size for between $6,000 and $7,000, or between 5 and 6k for the smaller size. Could be very cool I we get the O.K from the board.
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