Wild florida corals

[Dr.Brain Coral]

Hello everybody. I am setting up a florida biotope and LOOOVVVEEE pictures of wild florida corals, fish and inverts so post your pics here so I can see!!!

[Dr.Brain Coral]

Any one?

[frizzo98]

I happen to live in Florida happen to see lots of corals and fish but don't actually have any photos or videos but, Reef Fish Identification and Reef Coral Identification by Paul Humann is the best resource I have found to help me ID fish and corals.

[G_Sanab922]

^+1 Elkhorn is nice! But very hard to find. check out those books ^

[Dr.Brain Coral]

Okay can Ill check them out

[sam.basye]

All from SW Florida

Tube coral
Orange sponge
Porcelain crab---terrible picture
Pistol shrimp
Small mystery fish
Sand dollar
Orange "giant horse conch"
Thorny starfish
Yellow stripped hermit
Unknown hermit
Sand

[ackee]

The mystery fish (with hermit crab) is a baby Grey Snapper. They are common Gulf Stream strays in late summer up here in NJ.

[G_Sanab922]

Originally Posted by ackee

the mystery fish (with hermit crab) is a baby grey snapper. They are common gulf stream strays in late summer up here in nj.

+1

[sam.basye]

Thanks for the mystery fish ID! Wish I still had it, and its friend...had two of them and they both went 'missing' shortly after getting them. I presume they ended up shrimp food :/

[ackee]

You are very welcome. Because I do much of my fish collecting here in NJ in late summer when Gulf Stream tropical strays become numerous, I'm most familiar with the juvenile stages of all these fishes. The Grey Snapper (Lutjanus griseus) is also called the Mangrove Snapper, and I see many dozens of small ones every year, most a little more than an inch in SL. They do well in an aquarium, but do get large fast, and are deadly predators.

I will do my last collecting trip for the year tomorrow. Butterfly fish, most about the size of a dime to a nickel coin, are everywhere this year, hundreds of them, mostly Spotfins with a few Four Eyed. Also lots of Spiny Puffers (A. schopf)i, tiny Black groupers, Gag groupers, Cornet Fish, a few Short Bigeyes, some tiny Lookdowns, Trunkfish, and many, many Seahorses.

I keep only a very few fish, and almost no Seahorses. I have just one Seahorse from last year, caught when it was small, while I was scuba diving in Barnegat inlet. It's grown to full size, and finds most of its own food in a large fowlr aquarium that is overgrown with all sorts of small creatures. The only other fish in the aquarium is a foot long 5 year old Spotted Drum, so the seahorse has no competitors for the naturally growing food and has grown quite fat and sassy.

I've been addicted to catching my own fish scuba diving and snorkeling since I was a teenager more than 50 years ago, and when I was younger and air travel was simpler and more civilized I collected all over the Caribbean.

[sam.basye]

That's really cool! I had no idea they can make their way that far. I wish I lived near the beach..fishless at the moment :/ I caught the two mangrove snappers with a homemade slurp gun.

[sam.basye]

Found a better pic of the little guy.