Musho3210's Reef Log

[Musho3210]

turned on the light and saw all these little creatures scurrying away into the cracks of the live rock. Im hoping these are copepods or something. They are very small and look like rolley polleys. Im not that surprised since i got a cupful of live sand from a refugium. And im pretty sure some of this rock that i bought came out of a refugium so i expect a large pod population.

I also saw a very small feather duster (its got this hard little tube and little feathers coming out so i guess its a feather duster). I never really noticed how much corraline was on the rocks until the tank cleared up.... I'll take pics but my camera is full with pictures from the shedd aquarium (took over 200 pictures)

Nobody else has an ID for those anemones? I would hate to kill them.....

 

[Musho3210]

I know what those anemones are, actually they are mushroom corals, some type of filter feeding shroom that doesnt pose a threat. THere called orange ball anemone or something

Pictures of my finally uncloudy tank:

 

[Musho3210]

Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 5
PH - 8.4

All good No diatoms yet

 

[SkiFletch]

Good start musho. Are you from the States?

 

[Musho3210]

chicago

 

[SkiFletch]

Cool, I thought that looked like US rock.

 

[Musho3210]

lol how do you tell?

 

[SkiFletch]

lol how do you tell?

Heh, well unless you take out a second morgatge on your house and buy tampabaysaltwater.com rock, our stuff is always WAY more bland than what the UK guys get. Farming and import restrictions on LR are MUCH more stringent here in the States, so we struggle to get as many goodies as they're blessed with.

 

[Musho3210]

well this is second hand rock and sealife seems just as good as tbs. Got this rock 3 bucks per pound, 27 pounds, came with a free cup of live sand, i say its worth and and there were no second or first mortgages in the house. ANd i doubt my mom would mortgage the house for my hobby....

We americans just need to learn how to be more patient and wait for our rock to get as nice as uk's. At least its not as bad as australia....

 

[BigC]

so we struggle to get as many goodies as they're blessed with.

We pay on average around £200 for a 20kg box of cured Fijian.
but
I sure as hell wish I could get my hands on some of the beautiful corals you guys can get...especially those Rics & Zoo's
Regards
BigC

 

[SkiFletch]

Amen BigC. We Americans have strict laws on LR harvesting and import from natural reefs, but very loose ones for corals...

Any wild-harvested LR bound for the States cannot by law have any visible organisms living on it. That means no macroalgaes, kelp, corals, sponges, large tunicates, live bivalves/mollusks, and plenty more. About the only thing allowed to be shipped on LR is calcerous algaes. Because of said laws LR harvesters take high-pressure powerwashers and powerwash the rocks to remove all these organisms from it because it's better for them to kill all the organisms with a powerwasher than to risk getting caught by a random CITES inspection transporting them alive. Its so backwards and dumb.

The only exception is tampabaysaltwater.com and rarely liveaquaria.com. Each have their own live rock farms (TBSW's are in the gulf/carribean and liveaquaria's are in hawaii) where they have essentially dumped tons of long-dead reef bones dug up from construction sites around the tropics. These acres and acres of rubble farms have been sitting for years just behind wild reefs and as such grow tremendous numbers of organisms. But because the reefs are man-made, they can skirt the wording of the law and transport the rock with whatever happens to be living on it at harvest time. liveaquaria's facility is still in its infancy so shipments from there are somewhat rare (if they do put some up for sale its always in the divers den), but TBSW's are mature and shipping LR upon demand. Furthermore, TBSW ships their rock in water, their collection sites are just off the coast of the storage facilities, and it generally arrives still fully cured, so all those little critters remain alive. Fantastic system they have, but man is it expensive.

 

[Musho3210]

tbs has had hitchhiking fish even. Is it only tbs or all live rock farmers in the gulf?

 

[Musho3210]

well i think i found a nice and small brown mushroom on one of my bottom rocks:

Some other nice rocks:

 

[SkiFletch]

Only one I know of that created their own farms by dumping rubble into the ocean that I know of (and therefore able to skirt the wild-collection laws) is TBSW.

 

[Betta5]

Tank looks amazing. Makes mine look even worse!
I cant wait to get LR, cant wait to see it packed with corals!