Louie

yeah, they had all kinds of stuff like that, they had freshwater rays too.

I also saw them have alot of oddball fish like elephant nose and some really neat looking pipefish

I watch that show 'Tanked' mostly for the shark and rays .

The tea cup freshwater rays are beautiful and have been around a long time as far as in the market though poor survival rate  . 

Yea most people ship juvenile shrimp that you can't even sex yet because they acclimate better and the odds pf getting males and females are higher. If he sent you just males that means he took the time to do so instead of just grabbing a random 15. Or he was selling you his culls since most males have poorer coloration compared to females. If you can, can you PM me the name of this seller so i know to avoid him in the future?

''If he sent you just males that means he took the time to do so instead of just grabbing a random 15.''

This was very interesting/helpful I would have never thought .

here's their website

http://www.gainesvillefish.com/

Thanks I don't blame you for just looking at their salt .  I saw the site and I LOVE cat sharks and rays .  I would love to see that .

''

Sharks/Rays

200 Gallons of Aquatropics is dedicated to Sharks and Stingrays. We carry several types of cat shark as well as horn shark. You can also find cortez rays and butterfly rays. We would love to help you plan your shark tank''

I agree . I have bought from several here and all very good but in my case I do count on the post office delay so May to Oct I cant order as simply to hot for a 2 day delay .

I have 2 orders coming this month .

Either way the people here are good and the shrimp , plants are good quality .

the first two are from a fish store I went to and the other one is from the FL aquarium.

What pet store do you go to ?

these are some pics of the reef tank at the Florida aquarium.

Great pics . That is truly the way to keep tangs .

i honestly cant remember if it is a 3 or 4 stripe damsel.  i basically got it to use to help cycle the tank and it was cheap.  he/she is cool though..definitely fun to feed.  The guys at the lfs were like get one of these..it'll die soon but whatever...so i did...but it is kickin around no problems.  i think as far as most of us aquarium folks go...we must be OCD about having more tanks...i am slowly planning a 14gal in my mind because i am afraid of whether the 3 gallon is sustainable and i don't want flush all that living cash down the toilet....my wife will kill me though.  i shouldve stuck with shrimp hahah

 Yes get the 14 gall you cant go wrong with more water , room.

I am looking at 20 gallon type systems or might just get a 20 long and add my own skimmer, lighting, etc .

I just don't want my wife to go off because she suffers from a form of saltwater tank PTSD from when we got married and I began my saltwater venture .

She doesn't mind fresh but has flashbacks of me mixing salt in big buckets in the kitchen or carrying buckets of salt from the beach which often spilled in the living room as I did water changes .

All these years and she hasn't forgotten , lol .

damsels are the hardiest fish in saltwater I think.

Clownfish are actually a type of damsel, I believe its a sub species but not exactly sure

Yes Clowns are in the Damsel family but IMO not nearly as hardy .

Hardy once tank is established but not like Damsels and the newer designer damsels are worse .

Honestly you can get most high end corals on a live sale for under $50 sometimes under $30. Buy frags because a full colony of any coral will certainly make the price go up.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes that's true . I was looking at ebay and very nice selection but I meant as you collect more and more specimens .

Some frags are dime tiny .  I would go crazy just looking at a few tiny frags in a tank , lol .

hahah no kidding.  there is a damselfish, 2 sexy shrimp, and a couple snails...looks like my 2 hermit crabs flew the coop and are rolling around somewhere in my house...or should i say...dead somewhere in my house

I might be one of the few who likes damsels , lol .

Granted the less combative types .

I had a Beau Gregory which I caught as a baby a few miles from here by a dock in the 70s .  Boy what a mean fish he turned out to be , lol . 

Lots caught tiny Domino damsels who as you know are nice looking with a black/white contrast but as bad as beau Gregory and loss all their color as adults  , lol.

We didn't know that damsels lost color or how mean , there was no internet back than .

Here is a pic of a pic of one of my 55 salt tanks from 70s perhaps early 80s .   The yellow tang lived over 10 years and it was caught in Miami though not from the area .

In fact think every fish was Miami caught .

I love the long finned var.

 

  I don't like long fins but those are beautiful .

I have a poison dart frog book book he signed for me.  I did some business with one of his partners in the Keys.

I think he is now living in the Keys . I am one of the few in Miami into fish since the old days who never got to meet him .

I know a guy who collected a few times with Wattley when he was collecting and even till his 70s Wattley he was deep waist in mud in swamps . My friend called it quits in his mid 30s , lol  .

Collecting and just being in fish areas was his true love the business part of it wasn't .

He began captive breeding for diff colors and higher survival rate . Keep in mind the survival rate from Amazon, etc to local pet store until 80s was deplorable .

He has a place out of little Haiti in Miami which sells discus and think angels  . I don't know if he still has anything to do with it but its still there .

I didn't know that he was also into dart frogs .

ok so i am no pro. and i have slowly been adding stuff but this is where i'm at:

 

 

I really want to get some brighter corals, but most of the really cool ones are crazy expensive....slow and steady i guess...

As the saying goes ''You want a nice reef tank or an estate on several acres?''  .

lol perhaps bit exaggerated but you know what I mean.

Nice inverts , any fish ?

No, once you do this you will have them in a different tank and raise them yourself. You can google this and find many ways. Its not hard just a little time consuming. I have two pairs of German blues that spawn all time but I dont remove the eggs because I have raised thousands of fry over the years, dont want to do it anymore. I have some bloodfin tetras in the same tank and was watching a few spawn in the roots of the frogbit last night.

 

Hatching and raising the fry is the same as angel fish  https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video;_ylt=A0LEV1gChY5WwKEAZ9lXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTByMDgyYjJiBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMyBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--?p=How+To+Artificially+Hatch+and+Raise+Angelfish&fr=yfp-t-901

I remember when Rams appeared in the marker in the 70s .  They were the wild color ,Insane prices and no one knew how to keep them.  I think it was actually Jack Wattley who introduced them .

They sure have come a long way as far as colors .

6 hours is only during cycling days. 

after the plant goes down perhaps might increase it to 8 or 12

 

6 hours now is to minimize algae growth for now since there's no plant inside yet

 

 

suggestions are welcomed though

Aquariumlover10 made a great point as far as adding plants now .  Tank doesn't have to be cycled for plants if anything they help cycle the tank and do well .

I think moss around the rocks will also look nice but why only 6 hours of light ?

I ask since you are adding carpet type plants .

The green looks like myrio .

I'm not an expert but I have myrio outside and looks like it .

it grows fat outside and like crazy but looking at your pic you have more than enough light for it . I threw some outside in a buried stock tank/quasi mini pond with guppies and it grew way thicker simply floating .

Okay, fixed your post for ya. ☺

Lol thanks .  I must have hit a wrong gadget but I couldn't figure out what and than regardless of what I hit I couldn't change it .

Other than  emails , animal forums and my free zombie attack online games I'm not that computer savvy and even than when the zombies are over running my fort I shut the computer off in a panic rather than being eaten .

Yeah the star was for food. It's actually gone now. I went about it wrong and my tank hasn't fully recovered from it. They rot fast. Cool star though haha. I have been using chocolate chip starfish for the harlequin lately

-Duffy

Harlequins are beautiful but a pain as far as starfish food and they kill and leave the starfish to rot other than the feet which they eat .

I had 2 common Florida Cucumbers and they also killed them .   In theory they don't but mine did and ate their feet .

They have been in the market for 40 years but since such a pain , few keep them.

Louie, what does the crossed out words mean?

When I signed on they were crossed and I couldn't change it .  I must have hit something by accident  .It changed on its own in the other posts . 

I just tried to change it in that post but the new letters came out the same with lines through them.

Nice topic. I used to do reef tanks about 18 years ago. I think I might do one again. I love the newer designer clown fish and would love to have a tank with some of them and some hint for them to swim and play in

Once you have salt you usually wind up doing it again and now lighting and skimmers so much better .

When I had salt it was strictly Under gravel filter than canister filters became the rage followed by wet/dry filters .

I did my FOWLER set up with just live rock on the 55 gallon UG filter plate , no substrate and all 4 filter tubes going with a strong Whisper air pump ..  I actually relied on water changes which I did at 20 percent every week using a combo of beach water and the only salt available at the time which was Instant Ocean .

The diversity of life and colors cant be beat , esp now .

I have a saltwater tank at the moment. Sadly I will probably e tearing it down by the end of the month. Will be moving a few cities away middle of this year and I figure it's better to do it now so I can save for the move haha.

To be honest I feel like "hardcore" shrimping is like the precursor to saltwater. It wasn't that difficult for me besides all the cool stuff I want haha. You definitely need to keep in mind more things but as long as you keep up on dosing or week/biweekly water changes it isn't too difficult. Then you stupidly accept a donation fish that gives gives ich to the rest of your fish killing them and the donation.... But the one sob damsel lives. WWHYYYYY.

Here's a few shots of my tank and its inhabitants.

My favorite and most recent addition

-Duffy

Nice and the Sri Lanka  stars are not easy but not sure how well it will do with that Harlequin shrimp , lol.

I guess its food for it .

I had harlequins decades ago used to feed the sand stars I picked up by piers .

You could always set up another tank in the future .

hey! thanks for the reply. i'm not too sure about what bacteria and purifier exactly, but he says that its for the bacterial growth that is essential for the water. purifier i'm not sure whats that for.

 

its comes as a surprise for me as i'm on a planted tank for the no changing water part for 21 days straight and only do 50% on the day before putting in the shrimp. so i'm a little bit worried for her in case anything goes wrong. 

You could wait 2 weeks after the 21 day water change .

I wait 30 days , do water change wait two weeks do another water change and than I'm ready because better safe than sorry .

I agree that 80 is on the warm side but that wont kill them . I have a cull tank in a cichlid room that stays mid 80s more or less year round and they do well but not breed as fast however they will do better at cooler temps . IMO 74 is ideal

I think your C02 is killing them.

I have never had luck with C02 and shrimp though countless here have .

Perhaps shutting off the C02 at night is an idea .

Thanks there is a pet store I go to called Exotic Aquariums which carries man made reef rocks . They place them in bulk in their saltwater system and the rocks look very nice with coralline , granted newer rocks are just plain.

I need to see the rock I'm buying , pick it out lol .

The problem for me with anemones is that I love feather dusters and mushrooms and a wandering anemone or possibility of wandering is a problem.

A friends son has a carpet anemone which is stunning and one night after 2 years it moved and stung and killed a few soft corals .

''Picasso clowns are my all time favorite saltwater fish!''

I love them as far as the not insanely expensive clowns but yet different

Have you seen the lightning clowns ---

http://reefbuilders.com/files/ngg_featured/lightning-maroon-clownfish-620x371.jpg

or the pricey blue clowns --

http://www.saltwateraquarium.com/lightning-electric-blue-clownfish.html