Oyster Reef Ecosystem Tank

[happyhourhero]

looking good!

[OllieNZ]

Can't wait to see this in the tank

[Chasmodes]

Finally finished the oyster reef, all of the oysters are glued into cultches that fit together.

Front, from above:


Front, tank bottom level:


Left side:


Right side:


Here's a video, trying to show depth and perspective that photos can't seem to capture. I tried to keep the aquascaping rule of thirds in mind when doing this. I'm really excited about how it turned out, better than I imagined when this all started.
https://youtu.be/I0d8HfyIGMg

Next up, finish the stand.

[Breadman03]

That's going to look great!

[Chasmodes]

Thanks Breadman!

I wanted to embed the video, so I'm trying again:

[Chasmodes]

Originally Posted by happyhourhero

Got a Hypsoblennius invemar this weekend! So stoked! Been wanting one forever. I gave a guy some free frags and by chance he is a diver and I mentioned that they are out there and that if he ever finds them, I would love one. He actually found them and got me one and he took one. It has been hiding behind my overflow for a couple of days but I saw it out on the rocks last night so hopefully it comes out soon for good.

Hey Zack, how is your Hypsoblennius invemar doing? Are all of your blennies getting along? Any pics?

Regarding my tank, no further progress since I finished the oyster reef cultches. Money is the issue. Right now, the stand makes for a great workbench for assembling my 75g stream tank DIY 3D background. I've made quite a bit of progress on that, for another thread in another forum

After I'm done with that, I'll complete the stand. I've purchased everything that I need, so all I need to do is the assembly, painting, and finishing of the stand and cabinet doors. I also need to build the face frame for my cabinet drawers.

[happyhourhero]

Cool, cool. In my frag tank I have a seaweed or eyelash and a tesselated. In my main tank I have a seaweed, 2 Molly Millers and 2 Tesselated.

They all seem to get along well but i have not been able to find the tesselated in my main tank. They are super shy.

[JZinCO]

Chas, just letting you know your build has inspired me. I am planning a 30g, 2nd display tank for macroalgae and seagrasses. I have tediously spent time pairing and gluing mussel shells (with varying degrees of mouth openness). I have read in the literature, snails like to lay eggs inside dead bivalves, plus maybe my (eventual) barnacle blennies may like them.
Or they may just create the perfect habitat for hair algae

On that note, I've also got a bunch of old barnacles.

Both the barnacles and mussels will decorate the back wall I will put together.

Anyway, can't wait to see more progress from you.

[Chasmodes]

Originally Posted by JZinCO

Chas, just letting you know your build has inspired me. I am planning a 30g, 2nd display tank for macroalgae and seagrasses. I have tediously spent time pairing and gluing mussel shells (with varying degrees of mouth openness). I have read in the literature, snails like to lay eggs inside dead bivalves, plus maybe my (eventual) barnacle blennies may like them.
Or they may just create the perfect habitat for hair algae

On that note, I've also got a bunch of old barnacles.

Both the barnacles and mussels will decorate the back wall I will put together.

Anyway, can't wait to see more progress from you.

Wow, thank you for the compliment! I can't wait to see your tank as well. Do you have a build thread? I like the idea of a barnacle and muscle wall. It is tedious to match and glue shells like that, more effort than I imagined when I started out. But, now that I'm done, I kind of miss it. I view it as art work. All I have to do is make it living art work!

Not much new on this build except I painted the doors to my stand. I have to build a face frame and install them still. I'm still using my stand as a work bench for my other tank build. I guess I should stop being lazy and clear off the work bench that I have that is designed for that purpose Also, lack of money still plagues me. My well pump is going bad, so fixing that has to come before my tank purchases. Still, I'm hopeful. I've been dragging this out way too long.

[Michael Hoaster]

I hear you on the money thing. I think that's why there's so much DIY these days.

I am patiently waiting for you to get this great idea going! You have dragged it out a bit. Like I should talk…

[jewlz]

What an involved build! I cant wait to see it all together with water in it.

[Chasmodes]

Thanks guys.

Yeah Michael, the financial crisis of 2008 hurt me pretty bad along with my daughter's school loans... ugh...

[Michael Hoaster]

Yeah, that was rough. I took a warehouse job just to get by. That was also when I bailed on reef keeping and converted my tank to fresh water planted. On the bright side, I finally learned enough to be successful with plants. Combining what I learned from both sides was huge for me.

Keep chugging along! Do what you can, and keep us informed! There's a lot you can do for free, like research, design and decisions on things like overflows, etc.

[Chasmodes]

Originally Posted by Michael Hoaster

There's a lot you can do for free, like research, design and decisions on things like overflows, etc.

Been doing a lot of that! I still haven't decided on the overflow yet. I don't want a center overflow, and the sump will be in the next room on the other side of the wall. At least, that's the plan for now. The stand is not much lower than the tank, so head height will be less than a foot probably. But, I could scrap the sump stand and put the sump on the floor or under my tank. All up in the air.

Here is the tank... what would you do for an overflow if you used a sump? (question for anyone too)



I may not use a sump at all for this tank. Not sure yet. I won't be using a skimmer, so if I used the sump, then it would be for extra water volume, a place to do water changes and such, and a fuge.

Here is the sump:

[Michael Hoaster]

I'd do it coast to coast on the side that will be the back. Beautiful tank and sump!

[JZinCO]

Originally Posted by Chasmodes

Wow, thank you for the compliment! I can't wait to see your tank as well. Do you have a build thread? I like the idea of a barnacle and muscle wall. It is tedious to match and glue shells like that, more effort than I imagined when I started out. But, now that I'm done, I kind of miss it. I view it as art work. All I have to do is make it living art work!

No build thread yet. That tank is coming after I get my 30g tank inhabitants transferred to a 50g reef, which has been beset by setbacks. Hopefully in a month I will have a build thread up in the macro/aquatic plants section.
Gluing and matching the oyster shells is tedious but easy to do while watching a football game. If anything it makes me appreciate each individual mussel more and, if it all turns out, give me some self-satisfaction. Plus I got to eat some of the mussels

[Chasmodes]

Originally Posted by Michael Hoaster

I'd do it coast to coast on the side that will be the back. Beautiful tank and sump!

Ultimately, I still want to eventually construct a shadowbox background, so I don't want any equipment showing. Maybe I'll install a C2C on the side and hide it with oysters and muscles. I also like the low profile of the H2Overflow, but there isn't a lot of feedback out there for those that have them.

JZ, I know all about setbacks! Good luck and stop back and let me know when you start the build. The oyster matching and gluing is a bit therapeutic

[happyhourhero]

Hey,


Not to derail your thread but what do you think this one is? It came in with my tesselated a week ago.

[Chasmodes]

Hey Zack, any post about blennies is cool so go for it

I think that it looks like a juvenile seaweed blennie. Does it have any light blue lines on the face? Maybe those appear when they age? I don't know. I searched fishbase and there are some pictures that look similar, but your fish lacks the blue lines (right now) and the spot on the dorsal fin in your pictures. Can you see a spot when your fish raises the dorsal completely? There are several color variants of this species. This website has a few examples:

https://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/disco...ius-marmoreus/

Whatever your fish is, it's cool as heck and a great find!

[Chasmodes]

Since at the moment, funding is limiting my progress, I've been doing some research and I think that I may move eventually toward a complete living oyster reef (but with only a couple oysters), but it will be a very slow process achieving that. I want to start off when I cycle the tank using macro algae and then add some grass as the tank cycles. I'll use live sand that I'll collect too. I want only bay critters in there. I think that eel grass is out of the question, because I don't think I'm allowed to collect it here and I can't find any on-line. But, there are two native grasses for mid-bay salinity that I can purchase on-line, shoal grass and widgeon grass. I think that starting with a natural approach with the substrate and plants will be a great start for inverts to survive in my tank, and I think that the fish will flourish.

As far as macros go, there are several red and green species that I can collect locally. Any life that hitchhikes on the macros would be welcome in the tank. After cycling, I'll also add some hermit crabs and snails, perhaps an anemone or two. I know that they'll eat some macros, so I probably will have to constantly add macros to the tank and sump. I'll run it fallow for a few months before adding any fish so as to limit or prevent parasitism on the fish, along with quarantining the fish.

After the fallow period, I'll begin adding the hardier fish like the blennies, gobies, skilletfish and killifish or anything really cool that I think could survive in the tank at that time. Once the tank is well established, then I'll consider some tougher fish species, like seahorses and pipefish, but they may eventually be housed in the sump if the blennies are too aggressive. I may add some live bivalves at the time too, but not a lot, just an oyster or two, perhaps some mussels, tunicates, bryozoans, sponges or anything else that I may find in my area. My goal is to control nitrates and phosphates with a planted tank as much as possible, perhaps with some dosing too, we'll see. I'll have to feed the filter feeders regularly too and have read up on that somewhat. How long I can pull that off remains to be seen, but the ultimate goal would be to have a successful system that really resembles and oyster reef. The focus will always be for my favorite fish though, the blennies. The end goal is to have a good healthy population of them, maybe a breeding one!

Three builds have influenced my thoughts on the direction of this effort greatly, and I thank them for sharing their experiences with us, and I've linked their threads here:

"Michael Hoaster's Caribbean Biotope Seagrass Tank" including some of his aquascaping DIY ideas.

Gabe W's "My 55g Coldwater Aquarium". I really would like to know if he still runs this tank. It's been a long time since he's updated his post. I really enjoyed following that thread and the progress of his tank. I won't be using a chiller though for my tank as he did.

and also many ideas from Paul B's experiences, some you can view on his thread titled, "almost 35 year old reef pictures". I think the thread is about 30,000 pages by now, LOL and the reef a bit older. I really enjoy Paul's posts.

Anyway, there is a lot of good info in those threads and hopefully I can achieve my goals for this tank thanks to that info.

Thanks for following along and I am very sorry about how long this is taking. it's killin' me, believe me...

[happyhourhero]

Originally Posted by Chasmodes

Hey Zack, any post about blennies is cool so go for it

I think that it looks like a juvenile seaweed blennie. Does it have any light blue lines on the face? Maybe those appear when they age? I don't know. I searched fishbase and there are some pictures that look similar, but your fish lacks the blue lines (right now) and the spot on the dorsal fin in your pictures. Can you see a spot when your fish raises the dorsal completely? There are several color variants of this species. This website has a few examples:

https://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/disco...ius-marmoreus/

Whatever your fish is, it's cool as heck and a great find!

Thank you for the reply! I have a black blenny in my main tank that I always thought was a seaweed but I do not know anymore. It stays black but if you look at it very close in the light, it is covered in rust colored spots over the black.

I think this new one is a seaweed, at least it looks like it is. I will try and look at the dorsal when I get home. I will say that is changes colors more than any fish I have ever had and it does it quickly and frequently.

I am excited to see your tank once finances allow you to get it going. I know how that goes and that is why my tank is a pacific reef that is occupied by a bunch of Bay fish..lol. I will say that all fish I have collected locally have been in perfect health and I would trust them 10000x more than anything a wholesaler imports.

Here is a Molly Miller that came in with the seaweed and the tessellated.

[OllieNZ]

Based on what you want to achieve running your tank a little bit 'dirtier' may not be a bad thing. I'm letting my sump/fuge do what it wants in regards to algae/macro growth just keeping it trimmed enough so the light doesn't get blocked and the amount of micro fauna I'm getting is pretty good

[Chasmodes]

It sounds like maybe Hypleurochilus geminatus? Hard to see without a picture. All those cool blennies must make for a really fun tank! Do they seem to get along OK?

Originally Posted by OllieNZ

Based on what you want to achieve running your tank a little bit 'dirtier' may not be a bad thing. I'm letting my sump/fuge do what it wants in regards to algae/macro growth just keeping it trimmed enough so the light doesn't get blocked and the amount of micro fauna I'm getting is pretty good

Yeah, that's what I want, as much nature as possible. Dirty is my style, ha ha. Save money too maybe! Although I don't know what is a worse money pit, tanks or boats!

[JZinCO]

Updates Chas?

[SantaMonica]

Wow really neat. Just like the edge of Choctawhatchee bay I lived on.