Oyster Reef Ecosystem Tank

[Subsea]

Originally Posted by Chasmodes

Thank you Patrick and Heuristic! I'll try and raise them one day, but for now, they're on their own but most likely will become a nutritious meal for someone in the tank!

Wow, Patrick, that must have been a pretty amazing job. What was the weirdest thing you saw on such dives?

On one location, a large Sea Bass (> 500 lbs) took up residency near wellhead in 1000’ of water. When the operators representative, Shell “company man”, saw this large fish he asked if I could catch it. So, I attached a large shark hook with a chain secured to underwater frame of camera. Using a whole chicken for bait, I lowered camera to wellhead. Half of management on the drilling rig watched Sea Bass demolish our underwater camera and frame at a cost of $50K. Company man signed for cost of new camera system and carried Sea Bass filets home.

[Chasmodes]

That's amazing!!!! That's probably about $300 per pound of filet!

[OrQidz]

Oh dear subsea, I hope it made for a tasty meal after that!

[Subsea]

When water depth exceeded 1000’, we went from guideline underwater cameras to guildlineless combined with dynamic positioning. Oceaneering supported deepwater operations with a 10,000’ working depth ROV. On one location, when lowering blowout preventer stack and marine riser which exceeded 1,000,000 pounds, we shut down operations for two hours, at an hourly rate of $20K, to make large Jew Fish get off the wellhead.

We grilled some of the Jewfish that we caught.

[Chasmodes]

That must have been an amazing experience Patrick...just to see a Jewfish even. I am amazed also that they are found that deep.

One of my biggest concerns with the background is the amount of foam that I used and the risk that the entire thing will float up to the top after I fill the tank with water. To mitigate those risks, I filled the structure with river rocks and used spray foam to fill in the gaps. The foam will help bind all of the foam boards together along with the glue and plastic popsicle sticks that I used for the internal structure. The river rocks were to offset the buoyancy that the extra foam might cause. Also, the structure is big enough that it fits tightly in place under the frame of the tank. The junctions of the three foam sections also are shaped in such a way as you can't just pull them straight out. I plan to use a ton of silicone to affix this background to the tank glass underneath, on the sides and on the back of the background structure. The Drylok application made the fit even tighter. It fits so tightly that I can't pull it straight out to the front of the tank. I think that it might not need the silicone to stay in place, but I'm not going to take a chance on not using the silicone.

Last night, I fit the structure into the tank. The tight fit discussed above created another problem. Not only will it be challenging to apply the silicone neatly, but I had to really push to get it into place. The tight squeeze caused about a quarter sized spot of Drylok to chip away at the junction of the center and right sections. I'm going to pull it out and repaint that spot, but if it happens in during the final installation, then I'll just have to do an in-tank touch up. I'd rather not do that, but....I gotta get it done.

Here's what it looks like from the left side, you can't see the spot that chipped away. The spots that you see are just a reflection off of the glass.

You can see where the paint chipped away near the top of the junction of the middle and right sections, leaving the pink foam exposed. It should be easy to fix, so I'm not that worried about it.

[Subsea]

Wow! That is impressive.

[Chasmodes]

Thank you Patrick!

The naked gobies laid eggs. Now, all three species are spawning. Here is a video of a male naked goby (Gobiosoma bosc) guarding eggs, but most of the eggs have already hatched:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPNWufLGpPE

At the same time, the male skilletfish is also guarding eggs. If you look closely, around the 7 second mark, you can see a baby fish swim toward the surface:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGmWMK9WRQQ&t=2s

There are fish fry swimming at the water's surface just about every day now. I believe that the ones currently swimming around are naked gobies, but it is very hard to tell them apart. These seem a lot skinnier with smaller heads than the ones that I caught on video previously.

I picked up a breeder cage from a LFS the other day so I can try to see if I can keep them alive. I need to find another way to hang it from the tank because the metal hanging devices that came with it will most likely rust.

[Subsea]

Your system is a “la natural”, I love it. The fact that you collect such neat things and bring them into your ecosystem by itself is a milestone. Getting past the larvae stage is the challenge.

I have fifth generation marine mollies in outside mariculture tanks buried in the ground. Green Mollies are caught in the wild in both fresh and marine environments. Tomorrow, I go collecting with the grandkids in down town Austin on Lady Bird Lake, which is the Colorado River. Would you help a brother out with the “grass shrimp” video you did and provide a link. I lost the original you linked me. The kids would enjoy seeing it. I am not sure who the biggest kid is.

Kevin,
Thanks again for this thread and for your contribution to the hobby.
Laissez les bonne temps roulee,
Patrick

[Chasmodes]

Thank you Patrick!

Is this the video that you wanted the link for?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2DTcrYwppE&app=desktop

[Subsea]

Thank you my brother. PaulB says that where he lives on Long Island, “the grass shrimp are so thick that they take turns to get in the water”. To make that type of a claim sounds like a Texacan,

[Chasmodes]

Originally Posted by Subsea

Thank you my brother. PaulB says that where he lives on Long Island, “the grass shrimp are so thick that they take turns to get in the water”. To make that type of a claim sounds like a Texacan,

That is funny! They get pretty thick at my collecting spot, depending where I scoop with my dipnet. Once scoop of any aquatic vegetation will bring in hundreds of grass shrimp. Shrimp salad!

BTW, I put 30 shrimp in each of my tanks. In the tank where I house my fish, I have about 7 left. In my 20g high, no fish, there are at least 25 left. I know that a few died because they went carpet surfing. Another cool thing about them is that if I don't feed the tank, they eat algae and cyano! You can tell because their digestive tract is transparent, so you can see what they eat, and when they eat cyano, their stomachs are cyano red!

My takeaway, however, is that you'd need thousands of shrimp in the tank to make a dent in the cyano if using them to control it is your goal. They just don't eat enough of it fast enough.

[Chasmodes]

Oh, and another observation... I used to feed the 20g high heavily with flakes, pellets and oyster feast. There was a buildup of detritus from the heavy feeding and also from dead macroalgae that decomposed. The clean up crew of grass shrimp, mud crabs, amphipods and bristleworms have eaten almost all of it. The sand is almost clean now. Pretty cool!

[McPuff]

Originally Posted by Subsea

Your system is a “la natural”, I love it. The fact that you collect such neat things and bring them into your ecosystem by itself is a milestone. Getting past the larvae stage is the challenge.

I have fifth generation marine mollies in outside mariculture tanks buried in the ground. Green Mollies are caught in the wild in both fresh and marine environments.

I agree, this system is really interesting.

And very cool that you've been successful at breeding saltwater mollies too! I have tried a couple times to acclimate them to saltwater, thought I succeeded, but they all died within a couple days. Next time I will have to try giving them more like a week (vs 1 day) to ramp up the salinity. Have read of other people finding it very easy to acclimate them even within 1 hour! Perhaps I'm just trying to wrong mollies? Should be able to do it with any species though...

[Subsea]

Originally Posted by McPuff

I agree, this system is really interesting.

And very cool that you've been successful at breeding saltwater mollies too! I have tried a couple times to acclimate them to saltwater, thought I succeeded, but they all died within a couple days. Next time I will have to try giving them more like a week (vs 1 day) to ramp up the salinity. Have read of other people finding it very easy to acclimate them even within 1 hour! Perhaps I'm just trying to wrong mollies? Should be able to do it with any species though...

When buying mollies from hatcheries, the weak & strong survive because they are pampered. In the wild, the weak would have died during the first week. In my experience for 40 years with hatchery mollies is I lose 40-50% in the conversion after the first week. I drip acclimate store bought mollies for 6 hours and I adjust temperature and go straight in fresh to salt. Granted, the rush job killed more fish in first 24 hours but after two weeks, I saw no real change in survival rate. The strong survived and adjusted. I have had similar results with green mollies & grass shrimp living in fresh water environments. Of course, changing the adjustment over to a two week period would save more fish.

[Subsea]

Originally Posted by Chasmodes

That is funny! They get pretty thick at my collecting spot, depending where I scoop with my dipnet. Once scoop of any aquatic vegetation will bring in hundreds of grass shrimp. Shrimp salad!

BTW, I put 30 shrimp in each of my tanks. In the tank where I house my fish, I have about 7 left. In my 20g high, no fish, there are at least 25 left. I know that a few died because they went carpet surfing. Another cool thing about them is that if I don't feed the tank, they eat algae and cyano! You can tell because their digestive tract is transparent, so you can see what they eat, and when they eat cyano, their stomachs are cyano red!

My takeaway, however, is that you'd need thousands of shrimp in the tank to make a dent in the cyano if using them to control it is your goal. They just don't eat enough of it fast enough.

Neat on the clear digestive tract. When I feed flake food that was differrent colors, you could see those colors inside of shrimp.

[McPuff]

Originally Posted by Subsea

When buying mollies from hatcheries, the weak & strong survive because they are pampered. In the wild, the weak would have died during the first week. In my experience for 40 years with hatchery mollies is I lose 40-50% in the conversion after the first week. I drip acclimate store bought mollies for 6 hours and I adjust temperature and go straight in fresh to salt. Granted, the rush job killed more fish in first 24 hours but after two weeks, I saw no real change in survival rate. The strong survived and adjusted. I have had similar results with green mollies & grass shrimp living in fresh water environments. Of course, changing the adjustment over to a two week period would save more fish.

That's a really good point. Perhaps I'll have to buy more like 10 the next time and see how it goes. Glad to hear that I'm not the only one trying it over the course of 1 day (or even hours). Given their life history strategy, it really should work if the fish are hardy.

[Heuristic]

I've never had any luck with Mollies. I think the current in my tank is too much for them while they're getting used to things. They get blown all over the place

[Subsea]

Originally Posted by Chasmodes

That is funny! They get pretty thick at my collecting spot, depending where I scoop with my dipnet. Once scoop of any aquatic vegetation will bring in hundreds of grass shrimp. Shrimp salad!

BTW, I put 30 shrimp in each of my tanks. In the tank where I house my fish, I have about 7 left. In my 20g high, no fish, there are at least 25 left. I know that a few died because they went carpet surfing. Another cool thing about them is that if I don't feed the tank, they eat algae and cyano! You can tell because their digestive tract is transparent, so you can see what they eat, and when they eat cyano, their stomachs are cyano red!

My takeaway, however, is that you'd need thousands of shrimp in the tank to make a dent in the cyano if using them to control it is your goal. They just don't eat enough of it fast enough.

I grow them out here and sell to retail stores at $0.50ea as “janitor and feeder”.

[Chasmodes]

Originally Posted by Subsea

I grow them out here and sell to retail stores at $0.50ea as “janitor and feeder”.

Nice! That they are!

[Chasmodes]

I caught the skilletfish in the act of spawning yesterday. Both the male and female were in the shell together for about an hour and a half past the time that I first saw them. There were eggs on one shell half, so I'm not sure how long it took them to lay them. Anyway, despite their objection over the lack of privacy, I shot a video. A striped blenny was curious of the activity as well, looking for a cheap thrill, no doubt. Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZmTdnV31r0&t=5s

[Michael Hoaster]

Wow! Happy fish! That's awesome.

What's next?

[Chasmodes]

Right now, the biggest hold up is that I need to install a few new electrical lines to my tanks, one dedicated line in the rec room where my tanks are, and one or perhaps two in my basement where my sump will go, and other tanks. Other tanks? I'm thinking of building a stand with some grow out tanks for raising fry. Why the hold up? I'm cheap. My Father-in-law is a retired electrician and will help me do the electrical work so it follows code, but he is recovering from a health issue and it might be a few weeks before he can help me.

While typing this, I realized that when I talk about my fish fry, that I get hungry. I feel guilty.

Regarding my FW tank, I have been putting off siliconing my background in place, out of fear, I think. I just need to do it and get it over with. To be fair, every time I have time to work on it, something else has come up, so I guess I shouldn't feel too guilty about it. This weekend, for sure, that will happen...a firm deadline.

[Michael Hoaster]

I wish I could get more stuff done too. I'm cheap AND lazy! Plus, everything is always more complicated than I anticipate. Just when I think I'll make some real progress, something always comes up, adding complication. Then I spend the whole day addressing it, and never quite get to the thing I was planning to do! So I plod along. It's not that I'm in a big rush, but I'm anxious to get to the fun stuff, like filling the tank with life.

[Chasmodes]

Originally Posted by Michael Hoaster

like filling the tank with life.

Exactly...that's why I have a 20g long, to get me through until I can set up my dream tank!

[Subsea]

Originally Posted by Chasmodes

Exactly...that's why I have a 20g long, to get me through until I can set up my dream tank!

My brother,
You must be addicted. I am glad it only took a 20G tank to get “your fix”
Laissez les bonne temps roulee,
Patrick