liquidg Posted May 13, 2012 Report Share Posted May 13, 2012 (edited) It’s been another month or so and there have been a couple of trips for the Brisbane marine aquarium society-aandtsociety guys to research our waters on field trips and collect a few fish and inverts for our display tanks as well. There are a few new club members that are keen on some fish and inverts for their tanks and are already starting to understand the relevance of searching for your own tank pets as to how educational it is to see how and where they live to begin the process of a better understanding of their aquarium pets. The weather hasn’t been kind in the early part of this time, it is normally not so good at the end of April any way, yet the times we went to the water it has been very nice, we try to plan to get the best, so far so good, This little critter is quite common on the inside of the Islands in the south east. We had a marine biologist in the local newspaper recently commenting on these and referred to them as stone fish, his field must have been algae,lol. Caledonian stinger-inimicus caledonicus,hidden in sand waiting for a goat fish I scared away, no dinner for this revolting looking hunter! The stinger encouraged from the sand for a pic. Sabre toothed-fang blenny showing a fang,owch,would you look at those teeth, several times I have had them slice my finger. Looks like its lost one tooth and by past experience with them it doesn’t take long to grow back and start tearing at fish again. A nice saddle back chaetodon hanging around on a very nice trip in clear water. Edited May 13, 2012 by liquidg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidg Posted May 13, 2012 Author Report Share Posted May 13, 2012 (edited) This little dice box was held just for a pic,most of us have at least one now. The catch of the month has to be Mike’s lineatus surgeon he caught, these are not an easy fish to catch!!!! Common but they just take off and you have to be prepared to give chase for quite a while at times. These are such a nice blenny; the harp tail is a top fish for a reef tank. This one is mimicked by a fang blenny. A group of young latezonatus and dominoes get together once the camera is pointed at them, certainly not camera shy. Edited May 21, 2012 by liquidg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidg Posted May 13, 2012 Author Report Share Posted May 13, 2012 (edited) This is a female east coast meredithi,on the west coast the slightly different variation is called a personifer. A turtle intent on getting some algae. Some good times have been had as usual and lots of education on our marine relatives has been achieved. I nearly forgot to put this in,its the weapon of the mantis shrimp that was given to me by one,lol. Nasty combo of weapons on them. Against most information on these killing machines,i have always found all species seen in our area to have a weapon of both club and spike. The spike part is actually more so a knife, the last part of the spike has a very sharp cerated edge blade to it, club,spike,knife,the mantis comes with a substantial arsenal in each arm! Edited May 13, 2012 by liquidg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slr5000 Posted May 13, 2012 Report Share Posted May 13, 2012 i love looking at all the fish and inverts you guys collect i cant wait to start my marine tank Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidg Posted May 13, 2012 Author Report Share Posted May 13, 2012 It’s a very easy thing to achieve, a tough and successful reef aquarium bio system that is. Just takes a lot of work to build one that can handle anything thrown at it, those ones aren’t for sale, you have to make them. Allowing white spot in a marine eco system and believing large water volumes will ensure healthy tank life is so old school, I can’t believe they still put that rubbish from way back on to marine hobbyists. It’s a top interest, good luck if you do it mate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarg Posted May 15, 2012 Report Share Posted May 15, 2012 Nice pics as usual. That fang blenny does look a touch nasty! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidg Posted May 15, 2012 Author Report Share Posted May 15, 2012 Nice pics as usual. That fang blenny does look a touch nasty! Oh they hurt all right,so fast and so sharp and it feels like a paper wasp sting crossed with a paper cut feel to it,then it wont stop bleeding for ages! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobnater Posted May 18, 2012 Report Share Posted May 18, 2012 Nice looking pictures guys, I'm really new to marine but pictures like this is why I started in the first place. Keep it up! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidg Posted May 18, 2012 Author Report Share Posted May 18, 2012 Just remember bob these are a few main points to give you success. 1-The surface area for the bio community has to be intense (lots of area to exist on) and always make sure it is clean to have enough of them to catch and remove gases resulting from waste before these can poison your tank life. 2-Torture your waters with varied ammonia causing waste-dead tissue for the cycling to maturity before any quality life forms go into the waters to inspire a very large and tough bio community that can handle anything thrown at it. Algae, molluscs, corals,etc all give off varied wastes or upon death produce a different ammonia to each other, which needs a slightly different bio life form to oxidise it to something less toxic and they all exist on your tanks surface area where there is no life covering it. The amount of mutating that goes on with the tanks bio communities as they adapt to different food sources and environmental conditions is amazing. 3-Never let your waters achieve temps below22c or above 26c or your salinity below.22 or above .25 4-Off set the issue of when lights go out the algae with in corals and any other algae or cyano will produce CO2 causing your PH, undetected, to vary and stable PH and to some degree stable KH are your tank lifes saviours! 5-Anything like a substrate in the aquarium is where the white spot-ich protist will set up camp in wait for someone to emit stress signals and this type of protist is there the entire life of your aquarium, its one of the stages of mutation with in your bio community. Once you get the drift of how a marine eco system works you can achieve very healthy fish and inverts quite cheaply. See yah. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zhyr Posted May 24, 2012 Report Share Posted May 24, 2012 Join the club and come out with us Great group of guys and lots of frustration to be had... I mean fun... honest Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BRADDLES_ Posted May 27, 2012 Report Share Posted May 27, 2012 I love the pic of those latz... is that snorkelling or diving? What water depth? Bet its freeeeezing now... but well worth it! Great pics as always!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidg Posted May 27, 2012 Author Report Share Posted May 27, 2012 All these pics are from two free diving trips. I was hoping Mike was going to do the paddle out trip a few weeks back and I would have gone with him on my ski,he wanted a blue tang or two from out there and I wanted a pink clown fish from the latz reef. There is a shallow reef even the commercial guys don’t know of that’s in 30 on top to 45 feet at the base and covered in latz,you would never know this reef is there, just off shore! The other well known reef not far away has two shallow spots for latz as well just off it that most don’t know of but the un known reef has very old lat pairs on it, some over 7 inches in length and no other types of clowns except some pink amphiprion that they share the area with, no akindynos,the latz and them don’t get on that well. I would never take one of the big latz from there, they defend the area to any possible new akindynos taking hold and kicking the latz out,latz tolerate near anything, very nice natured amphiprions them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeadFishFloating Posted May 27, 2012 Report Share Posted May 27, 2012 5-Anything like a substrate in the aquarium is where the white spot-ich protist will set up camp in wait for someone to emit stress signals and this type of protist is there the entire life of your aquarium, its one of the stages of mutation with in your bio community. That was a good post but I must admit I have never followed point 5. I am curious if you have used the miracle mud filtration method before? IMHO the most impressive reef tanks I have yet seen have used this method, so I am well convinced of its value. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidg Posted May 27, 2012 Author Report Share Posted May 27, 2012 (edited) Well white spot is a mutation of the common protists in the matured marine aquarium. This protist can remain inactive waiting in the surface of a substrate for stress signals for a very long time or just down the track some come to be from the protist community any way. I have tried white spot out on every level of stress applied to a tank of varied fish and even added infected fish with the white spot parasite to see what happens. A long time ago there was an infested juvenile semi at the old pet city when I was there while we dropped off fish and the guys there i knew because the commercial guy I worked with sold to pet city back then. The semi I took home given to me, I fixed its infestation by wet section protist eradication, it was fine in near a month as it had lost a lot of body mass by the time I got it. With a standard substrate and with a sole aerobic oxidising community as the first media area as the water leaves the aquarium, I found with what I would call a clean wet section and substrate in the aquarium, some white spot but not a huge infestation would exist. With out the substrate but with wet section as the water left the aquarium, no matter what I did to inspire the parasite, nothing appeared at all and the infected ones added later on that time, the parasite infestation cleared up completely! A part from areas looked at under the microscope, this was done in many different ways to my conclusion, that the majority of the protist that run a matured aquarium are far stronger then the white spot protist and will graze on them as they do with the oxidising bacteria that starts a marine aquariums nitrite to nitrate part of the nitrite cycle! If the water is oxygenated and is run through this heavily populated protist community as an extensive surface area wet section, they cull near all the weaker protist called white spot, I use these principals and never get white spot or velvet even when I have tried to get some showing, they don’t make it past their relatives when forced through where they live! That’s just me,I would never expect any one to believe how I achieve things. All I can say is luckily for me and sadly for them,over all these years all those expandable tank additions for experimentation were free. Edited May 28, 2012 by liquidg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DeadFishFloating Posted May 28, 2012 Report Share Posted May 28, 2012 Its certainly a strong theory, and one I would love to trial. Kinda embarassing the gap we have in understanding the roles of micro organisms larger than bacteria, within our living biological filters and aquariums as a whole. If I had a spare 20kg of miracle mud to spare I would shoot it out to you to trial, would be interested on your thoughts hey. Have you used UV steralizers before? Problem lfs etc have is controlling parasites, is usually the available host density. So techniques that help break the cycle are always helpful. Whitespot is most vunerable at its cyst stage, but also much hardier. Always been a catch 22. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidg Posted May 28, 2012 Author Report Share Posted May 28, 2012 (edited) I have used miracle mud with and with out algae, standard and industrial strength UV sterilisers. The mud its self has some excellent elements for tank life, but for some of the other uses some try to achieve with it, some others I know and mysef,no! The prob with UV sterilisers is they hold back free swimming benthics at the larvae stages from growing correctly and other planktonic life forms from multiplying White spot/ich is a problem in standard systems for sure, annoying little critters,luckily their roughly 48 hour life span can be used agianst them. The one thing most forget or are not aware of I suppose,is white spot is toxic, no cleaners and near no filter feeders eat the blisters contents upon popping or on the fish or as adults,they just clean off the damaged area of bits of flesh after the blisters pop,lol! Normal zoo and phyto plankton is not at risk from protists at their adult stage and between sheds as they have a silica shell! I gave one of the guys some of my algae trimmings a while back to get some going in his algae area and he had a close look at what came with it,couldn't believe the varied planktonic and bentic life that came with it,thats what feeds my clams beyond nutrients and light in there. The micro and just below our sight life forms are everything to aquarium life,once you get some understanding of them,you can't fail with a reef aquarium. Edited May 28, 2012 by liquidg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
