Swami’s Tidepool Biotype ideas

I would really like to make a saltwater bio type of a beach near me called Swami’s. Swami’s has tidepools, and it is filled with life. I want to create a biotype of the tidepools there. Unfortunately, you are unable to collect animals, or even rocks at swamis, so that leaves me looking for the most common fish in Swami’s tidepools. So this is the stock that I want:

5 Tidepool Sculpins
A few Kelp or Shore crabs.
Multiple periwinkle snails
1 Sunburst Anemones
Derby Bryozoan
1 Sand Dollar
Some kind of small nudibranch - Hopkins rose, Spanish shawl, something like that
Volcano or Rough Limpet
A few broken-back shrimp
A few small kelp leaves
Sea Lettuce
Some kind of small plants
2 Chitons
Some Scavenging Isopods


So, here are my questions. Will a 20-30g tank be good for all of this? What salinity is normal for tidepools? How much will this all cost? Do I need a chiller?
Do I need to cycle the tank, or can I use media from my freshwater tanks?Any And all information is useful.

Thanks for reading!

I have no answers to your questions, but this sounds like a great project. Inspired by @eatyourpeas ?

I think that collecting and keeping any of these things in the state of California is illegal.

robmcd said:

I think that collecting and keeping any of these things in the state of California is illegal.

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I have not looked into this, but I do know collecting sculpin is fine, I dont think anemones are legal to take, but I think I can sort legality out. I just need some opinion on the fish I want to keep. I think I can find most of the stuff on my list. I’ve wanted to make a tidepool Biotype for a while.

I know that there are legal loopholes. Like it's illegal to own a desert tortoise unless you are an educator. There could be an educator clause, and I am assuming that there is an educator in your family since you own a desert tortoise.

robmcd said:

I know that there are legal loopholes. Like it's illegal to own a desert tortoise unless you are an educator. There could be an educator clause, and I am assuming that there is an educator in your family since you own a desert tortoise.

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Actually, there is no educator in the family. The loophole was that Desert Tortoises were banned to own in the 90s, and people could not get them. But then, they kept breeding, and people couldn’t keep 30 baby tortoise, so they made it legal to buy from accidental breedings. My mom is A biologist, and works with the San Diego Natural History Museum at Balboa Park. She studies birds, but majors in animal behavior. I could ask the museum and ask if she is illegible to permits for wild fish. My Main question is this: Do I absolutely 100% need a chiller?

It is a good idea to stay legal, and you can look into the California Department of Natural Resources to see what is allowed and whether you need a license. I know I cannot have sea urchins and octopuses, as an example.

For reference, my tank is approximately 37 gallons, and made of 1" thick acrylic.

The best approach and one I would recommend is:
- Select a tidepool you want to recreate. Measure temperature and salinity a few times of the year. You may find you do not need a chiller and can go without a heater as well.
- Marine bacteria is not the same, so taking media from FW tank will not cycle your SW tank. You can use some ocean water. I do not mix my own water, and instead just go to the beach and get some.
- Take pictures of what you like and research the different specimens. It is a lot of fun to do that!
- All the critters you listed are pretty sedentary, and except for the Kelp crabs that can get pretty big, a big tank may not be necessary. Start small and see how it goes. My "test" tank was an old refrigerator shelf/drawer made of acrylic. Took sand and water and started very small, amphipods, snails, limpets. Look at the PSB journal and you'll get the idea.

Happy to help, so let me know if you have any questions.

I Like Rare Fish said:

Actually, there is no educator in the family. The loophole was that Desert Tortoises were banned to own in the 90s, and people could not get them. But then, they kept breeding, and people couldn’t keep 30 baby tortoise, so they made it legal to buy from accidental breedings. My mom is A biologist, and works with the San Diego Natural History Museum at Balboa Park. She studies birds, but majors in animal behavior. I could ask the museum and ask if she is illegible to permits for wild fish. My Main question is this: Do I absolutely 100% need a chiller?

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I can't answer that question. I am a strictly freshwater guy. You won't ever catch me keeping a salt water tank. I surf and I can see the pacific ocean from my couch when I watch TV. That's all the saltwater I need.

eatyourpeas said:

It is a good idea to stay legal, and you can look into the California Department of Natural Resources to see what is allowed and whether you need a license. I know I cannot have sea urchins and octopuses, as an example.

For reference, my tank is approximately 37 gallons, and made of 1" thick acrylic.

The best approach and one I would recommend is:
- Select a tidepool you want to recreate. Measure temperature and salinity a few times of the year. You may find you do not need a chiller and can go without a heater as well.
- Marine bacteria is not the same, so taking media from FW tank will not cycle your SW tank. You can use some ocean water. I do not mix my own water, and instead just go to the beach and get some.
- Take pictures of what you like and research the different specimens. It is a lot of fun to do that!
- All the critters you listed are pretty sedentary, and except for the Kelp crabs that can get pretty big, a big tank may not be necessary. Start small and see how it goes. My "test" tank was an old refrigerator shelf/drawer made of acrylic. Took sand and water and started very small, amphipods, snails, limpets. Look at the PSB journal and you'll get the idea.

Happy to help, so let me know if you have any questions.

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I have many questions. 1, do I take sand from the beach? 2, if I take all saltwater from the ocean nearest to me, will my tank be cycled? Will a simple HOB be fine? A 40g cube tank is what I would, but a 20g would probably be goor, right? Are you familiar with any of these creatures besides the tidepool sculpin?

Also, the water temperature is in between 50-70 degrees, depending on what season it is. I don’t think I need a chiller. My outside tanks stay at around 75 degrees, but that’s in direct sunlight. I think it would stay around 65-70. I’ll test water.

I Like Rare Fish said:

Also, the water temperature is in between 50-70 degrees, depending on what season it is. I don’t think I need a chiller. My outside tanks stay at around 75 degrees, but that’s in direct sunlight. I think it would stay around 65-70. I’ll test water.

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The beauty of tidepool critters is they are used to temperature fluctuations.

eatyourpeas said:

The beauty of tidepool critters is they are used to temperature fluctuations.

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Nice! No heater it is

I have experience keeping tanks of tidal animals from the east coast of the US. Legalities of the entire list aside, tidal tanks are difficult due to the nature of the organisms. Coldwater tidal is even harder than warm. I don't know the temperature of the water for the environment relative to your house, so can't answer about a chiller or not. I will answer by type of animal instead for animals where I have experience with close relatives of the ones listed.

A few Kelp or Shore crabs.
- I'm not familiar with the common name, but if these are true crabs, they will almost certainly eat your other invertebrates and then move onto your seaweed. Random true crabs from a beach typically have to be kept in a species tank but can be very hardy in such a setup. Please don't keep crabs that fundamentally require kelp unless you have experience growing kelp in a tank (it's not easy!) as they will starve.

Multiple periwinkle snails
- They will try to escape your tank. These snails are used to crawling in and out of tide pools. They will go looking for other pools of water and will escape and possibly die unless your tank is sealed up super tight (in which case it will also be prone to heat issues).

1 Sunburst Anemones
- Anemones are hard to keep. Tidal ones are no exception. Tidal nems are much harder to keep than your average bubble tip anemone or mini carpet (both of those have strains that have been multiplied captivity and are therefore significantly hardier than those taken from the wild).

Derby Bryozoan
- Filter feeder and potentially hard to keep, although not always. There may be enough waste particulates to sustain it but it may also just get eaten.

1 Sand Dollar
- Extremely hard to keep!!! Do not get asymmetrical/flat urchins like sand dollars unless you have had experience and success with other echinoderms and have a well-established deep sand bed in a large tank. Also quite illegal to collect in most places I'm aware of.

Some kind of small nudibranch - Hopkins rose, Spanish shawl, something like that
- Also extremely hard to keep! And it would likely get eaten.

Volcano or Rough Limpet
- These would probably do ok, but possibly same issues as the periwinkles.

A few small kelp leaves
- Hard to grow in the average tank. Prone to randomly dying suddenly and polluting. Most likely would get eaten faster than it grows even if it can grow in the tank.

Sea Lettuce
- Very finicky to grow and practically everything eats it. You would be providing a snack not growing it a tank that has animals.

Some kind of small plants
- Plants? Like sea grass?? That stuff IS illegal to take in every place in the US I'm familiar with because there are conservation issues with it.

2 Chitons
- These are pretty hardy I believe but also have the potential to grind down softer materials like acrylic and plastic in ways that other gastropods don't do as much.

Some Scavenging Isopods
- Generally isopods should be left alone unless you've IDed them down to the species and know exactly what they eat. Some isopods are herbivores and are fine, but others will bite, eat, and/or parasitize some or all of your other animals and create a ton of problems in a community tank.

I don't know about the shrimp (common name is for a large group, not a specific species) but be careful as some even pretty innocuous looking shrimp species can be like the crabs as far as viewing everything else in the tank as a snack.

Also, be aware that if you use any sort of store-bought wet sand or live rock (both are illegal to harvest in CA just as in many other places in the US) or if you introduce any sort of livestock or rock from other regions, you should never return any of your native animals to the wild as you don't know what kind of new microscopic stuff you will be introducing at the same time (larvae, spores, diseases, etc.). This means if you find you can't keep a particular animal, your only ecologically-sound option is to take it to a LFS and not put it back where you found it.

I Like Rare Fish said:

I have many questions. 1, do I take sand from the beach? 2, if I take all saltwater from the ocean nearest to me, will my tank be cycled? Will a simple HOB be fine? A 40g cube tank is what I would, but a 20g would probably be goor, right? Are you familiar with any of these creatures besides the tidepool sculpin?

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You can take sand from the beach if it is allowed. I am in Washington State, so am not familiar with California laws. I used beach sand for the test tank, but for the large tank I just used Quikrete Play Sand.

Your tank will pretty much be cycled if you have sand and water from the beach.

HOB filter is fine. Keep an eye on the filter media and clean it often. Go with sponges if you can as they are more efficient.

Start with 20 gal. You may find it will be big enough.

5 Tidepool Sculpins - have
A few Kelp or Shore crabs. - have (they are mean jellybeans!)
Multiple periwinkle snails - have
1 Sunburst Anemones
Derby Bryozoan - have a similar specimen covering my rocks
1 Sand Dollar
Some kind of small nudibranch - Hopkins rose, Spanish shawl, something like that
Volcano or Rough Limpet - have
A few broken-back shrimp - have dock shrimp
A few small kelp leaves - have
Sea Lettuce - have
Some kind of small plants -have
2 Chitons
Some Scavenging Isopods - have

Also, if you can harvest a rock with barnacles, they are the coolest creatures! You will end up with hitchhikers anyway, I am sure. Like this guy!

So, California law states you are not allowed to take any animal from the wild and keep it for yourself

Do you know how to get a permit?