Collecting Trip

[miareefer]

Heres a few pics from my recent collecting trip to the coast we where blessed with favourable tides and calm winds . The main reason for the trip was to try and source another blue squamosa and to try and get a bit off rock for a tank in progress . We failed on the blue squamosa but had heaps off fun collecting and fishing we also got around 350 litres of seawater for a waterchange. Thats a 700km round trip from home but we have fun and its good to see some old friends. ;; ;;

[miareefer]

Heres a pic of a small reef in the background from my car doesnt look big but its amazing the things i find there its central to town so its easy to stroll down at anytime to collect all your janitors. its also a big acro nursery and leathers are everywhere.



OUCH i dont have a browse button on my upload pics box

[miareefer]

Heres a pic of all the water i drag back with me everytime my missus sometimes crack the sads when ime lugging all that salt in our new car ive been lucky and i havent had a blowout yet with my containers. Unfortunetely i had one with our previous car and had 25 litres off salt water go through the whole rear compartment.
Theres also another photo of some of the new rock i aquired its nice rock full of life and covered in coraline the only drawback is its loaded with mantis shrimps and pistol shrimps and juvenile mud crabs and aiptasia.

[miareefer]

So when ime collecting i spend a lot of time in the water either walking or diving and i really am like a kid in candy store but with all my tanks allready at full capacity i really have to show restraint and only take specific inverts and corals that i require. So here some photos of some clownfish i needed for some future research on clownfish aquaculture ive decided to go with my local species Tomatos and clarki clowns and build me 2 separate clownfish harems .

New corals aquired on this trip was a sweet pink fungia some new softies and various zoos and a new clam a brown and gold maxima .

[miareefer]

Heres a few pics from a nightdive we did during our stay our main target was Painted Crayfish these creatures are a vegetarian crayfish and move in very close in the shallows under the cover of darkness to feed on various algaes on the rocks .Sometime they can have there feelers completely out of the water at times to get at the good slimey algae rocks they love.Sometimes we refer to them as the underwater cockroaches of the sea .
Also included is a pic of a coral trout just big enough to feed the family .

[miareefer]

Heres a pic of my new clam i would of seen a at least a hundred of them but ime always looking for something different and dont have any like this goldy brown .

[Ninong]

Very interesting! I'm moving you to the Reef forum.

[Reefland]

How are the soft corals doing that you collected during your previous trip?

Scott Z.

[miareefer]

How are the soft corals doing that you collected during your previous trip?

Scott Z.

Scott
Ime really impressed with how they are going they definetely have settled in well i often wonder about there id because i really dont think they are a dendraphylia at all as a lot of these corals prefer overhangs like in deep water and my soft corals are a shallow water coral and these guys have been easy to keep.Its still early days but when i feed phyto they expand a lot so its all looking good.
ill post some updated pics tommorow.

[Beaker]

[QUOTE=miareefer]Scott
Ime really impressed with how they are going they definetely have settled in well i often wonder about there id because i really dont think they are a dendraphylia at all as a lot of these corals prefer overhangs like in deep water and my soft corals are a shallow water coral and these guys have been easy to keep.Its still early days but when i feed phyto they expand a lot so its all looking good.
ill post some updated pics tommorow.[/QUOTE
Where do you live? I live down in Florida and do alot of collecting myself. But, according to what I have read collecting live rock in Fla is a big no no. Here is the fla state site with all the limits:
http://marinefisheries.org/recreatio...harvestmls.htm
If you live in Fla maybe we can do some collecting together some time.

[ricksreef]

i'm pretty sure he's not in fla.,
we don't have anything here that he caught.

[Ninong]

He lives in western Australia.