Caribbean Biotope Seagrass Tank

Thanks, JLynn. I'm glad the sketches were helpful. I went looking for articles on dwarf angel harems, and I couldn't find anything on the harem to sorority thing. I did find articles and threads that reinforced my strategy, so it's all good!

You're exactly right about them not schooling. The male just cruises around and visits his lady friends as he forages for food, and as sunset approaches he eats less and flirts more! If all goes well and I get to witness spawning behavior in my tank, well it doesn't get much better than that!

I appreciate the compliment on my covering the bases. I am fascinated with how natural processes affect our aquariums. My goal is to take advantage of them to make it easier, rather than struggling to fight against them. I just love researching this stuff! But I also learn so much from these online discussions. It really adds another very enjoyable facet to the hobby! When I started with the fake mangrove root, I knew it would be struggle at times, so I figured if I started a thread about it, I'd HAVE to finish it. Otherwise I would have gotten discouraged and bailed. It's the same with the mud bank. It's a pain in the butt! But I put it out there, so I'd be too embarrassed to give up now.

Bottom line is, I expect to have a unique, thriving aquarium when I'm done!
 
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It would be such a treat to witness spawning behavior!

I also love researching for aquariums. I only wish we knew more about the natural processes so we could be more precise in our husbandry efforts and use them to our advantage. Progress is slow, but we've come a long way on that front, even if we still have a ways to go.

One thing I am interested in is the possibility of having a plankton refugium for nutrient export. One big problem with it is finding a way to keep the plankton in the refugium and out of the rest of the sump. A mesh screen would work well, but I would want to have nanoplankton and perhaps even picoplankton, which means I would need a mesh with holes smaller than 0.2 um! On the other hand, it would provide me with a fresh food source for nps corals, sponges, and the fish as well: the phytoplankton would grow from the light and the nutrients in the water, and they would in turn be eaten by the zooplankton who would be eaten by the larger zooplankton, and when I changed out part of the culture water, I could put the old water (and the plankton inside of it) into a doser to be fed to my corals, sponges, and fish, and the cycle would repeat. It's just an idea, at the moment, but I'll keep working on it; it would fantastic if it came to fruition!

Nice strategy for motivation. I'll have to appropriate that someday. I always spend so much time planning that I rarely get around to acting on my plans! Embarrassment would be a good motivator.

Well, your aquarium certainly will be unique. Maybe it'll even make TOTM someday!
 
Spawning is sort of the equivalent of having fresh water plants flower in your tank. When it happens, you know things are going well!

Your idea sounds great, but I'm not sure you'll get a lot of export. Is this happening when you change out the culture water? You're definitely getting good nutrient recycling, with the food chain. I look forward to hearing how it goes!

I too plan to have a refugium with plankton-and ulva and chaeto-above the display tank. I'm going to take my time and establish a large plankto-population in the display as well, before any fish are added. I love that we're at the point in the hobby where we approach our aquariums as mini-ecosystems, not just a box of fish.

I've got to run, but I have more questions!
 
I had a sun coral and a photosynthetic blue sponge in the old, reef incarnation of this tank.

I am very interested to hear about your sponge-keeping experience. I am considering some Caribbean sponges for my tank. They'll have to wait awhile for the tank to mature, so I have time to decide. Plus I'll need to see where the shady spots turn up. It would be amazing to keep a purple vase sponge! Or any colorful sponge that didn't die would be great. It would be sweet to get some encrusting guys on the fake wall! Being a Caribbean Biotope, I should keep some sponges.

One theory I was thinking of testing, was to do carbon dosing, and instead of exporting the excess bacteria via a skimmer, I'd return it to the tank for the sponges and other filter feeders. If sponges tend to starve in our tanks, would this be a solution?

Anyway, I look forward to 'soaking up' your sponge info…
 
I think you have misunderstood me a bit- I don't yet have any sponges. I am currently tank-less, and because I will be heading to college next year, I am planning on just keeping a Betta imbellis in a ~5g AIO. That way I can focus more on school, plus it is much less expensive. I have, however, been doing a lot of planning and research for tanks I would like to have in the future while I bide my time, and sponges just so happen to feature prominently in several of them.

There is not a whole lot of information on keeping sponges in aquaria, but I have managed to turn up some interesting information on the subject. First of all, take a look at James Fatherree's article, "Aquarium Invertebrates: A Look at the Sponges," on Advanced Aquarist. It is a good general primer. Also, he mentions there that due to the tiny size of the majority of sponges' collar cells (which are the openings through which they eat), the vast majority of sponges cannot ingest anything larger than 0.5 um. That is why aquarists have such difficulty keeping them alive; the smallest plankton available in the hobby is 2 um, which is far too large for most sponges. The only bright spot on that horizon is that there are photosynthetic sponges (such as the chicken liver sponge) that can do just fine without plankton.

Naturally, I was quite unsatisfied with this answer, so I did a bit more digging and found the article "Filter and suspension feeders" on Coralscience.org, which mentioned two genus of picoplankton that were promising (assuming cultures can be obtained and maintained), as well as the interesting tidbit that DOC and POC form about 90% of a sponge's diet. According to that article, those who had successfully kept sponges had managed to do so due to the fact that the large variety of plankton they fed to their other NPS were broken down by bacteria into large enough amounts of DOC and POC to sustain the sponges. So that is a good approach for an NPS tank, but for a system like yours, probably not.

Two other good sources of information on sponges are WetWebMedia's series of articles on sponges (written by the venerable Bob Fenner) which includes a list of which sponges he feels are best for aquariums- you'll be happy to note that many of these are Caribbean- and which he suggests ought to be avoided (many of which are toxic), and ReefKeeping's article, "Identification and Husbandry of Aquarium Sponges," which is more methodical and detailed than WetWebMedia's article, and takes a different approach to addressing the topic of husbandry. These articles are similar in nature, but I would say that Fenner approaches it from an aquarist's perspective, while Shimek approaches it from a scientific perspective. Both are well worth a look, though Shimek's article might take you a while to get through- it is says a lot in a relatively small amount of space, which can be rather overwhelming.

This research is what got me interested in the idea of doing a planktonic "refugium"; I would rather not depend solely on DOC and POC to feed my (future) sponges, so I would need to have some way of getting picoplankton. Even if I lived by the ocean, I would not want to take plankton from it, because I would basically be playing Russian Roulette when putting the plankton in my tank. At best, I would probably end up with a huge algae bloom. So, since I can't obtain picoplankton commercially, nor would it be practical to do so in terms of finances, my only recourse is to culture them myself. That is when I remembered that plankton act as nutrient exporters, and I figured that it would be more practical to feed them the nutrients in my tank water and let them filter it for me than to try and culture them separately, if at all possible. I could keep it restricted to picoplankton, but if I culture picoplankton to feed to sponges, why not also culture the zooplankton that prey upon it to feed to my corals and fish? I would need to strike a delicate balance to keep the zooplankton from eating too much phytoplankton too fast, but it has been done before in, for example, greenwater captive breeding set-ups. You are right about that being nutrient recycling rather than export, though. I am not sure how effective it will be as a strategy for keeping keeping nutrient levels down, but I intend to give it a shot. Most likely, I will try this out in a seperate system first, one populated just by sponges and cheap fish. The tank I hope to implement this with in the future is the NPS/Liopropoma Carmabi tank I am planning. Naturally, I don't want to risk making a mistake with such an expensive fish!

Anyways, from Coral Science's article, I would say that carbon dosing has potential. I can't remember quite remember, but I think bacteria (or at least some of them) are picoplankton, so it is entirely possible that you could feed them to the sponges. You would probably have to target feed them, but I am assuming you don't mind. Another approach would be to use biopellets in place of a skimmer.

Also, if you don't already have a source for plankton, take a look the selection of cultures offered by Seahorse Source! They have a wide variety in stock because they use them to raise seahorse fry, and list some helpful information about each strain on their website. For information about culturing in general, I bet the guys at the Marine Breeders Initiative forum would have lots of useful advice!
 
I've read some of those as well. I'll look for the other ones, thanks!

What's the common name of your expensive fish?

No target feeding. I know I'm too lazy to keep up with that. Ask my old sun coral! I'll just direct the outflow of the reactor into my gyre flow in the tank.

With carbon dosing, as I understand it, a carbon source, like a biopellet reactor (or vinegar or vodka dosing) is combined WITH heavy skimming, which exports the extra bacteria. So it's a carbon source AND skimmer. My theory is to try to replace the skimmer with living sponges. See what I mean?

I think your refugium idea will work well. For actual nutrient export you can remove algae, prune macroalgae (such as chaeto) and, as most do, protein skim. I guess removing fish would count as well. Almost forgot, water changes, yay!

I do have a few sources of plankton I'm considering, but I'll check out Seahorse Source. Gracias!

So, you're heading to college, congrats! I had a tank in school-a 20 gallon FW tank with tiger barbs and plastic plants! You're waaaaaay ahead of the game!

It sounds like you have a lot of great ideas to play with in the future! My advice would be to also focus on making your tanks as easy to work on as possible. Easy access to the whole tank for cleaning, easy automated water changes, evaporation top-off, etc. If a chore is not easy, it won't get done. Even the most dedicated hobbyist gets lazy!
 
The common name of Liopropoma carmabi is the Candy Basslet. Google it if you haven't ever heard of it- it is, hands down, the most stunningly beautiful fish I have ever seen. (When I say seen, I mean vicariously, through google images ;). And supposedly, the pictures don't even do it justice!). It is not too terribly uncommon in the Caribbean, but its collection range is limited to the areas where it is found deep down (~100-250 ft), so individuals sell for ~$800, and a pair will go for $2,000. Also, unlike most deepwater fish, it is pretty hardy, and supposedly not too difficult to breed in captivity, so I will probably try my hand at that as well, some day.

Yeah, I see what you mean about replacing the skimmer with sponges. I think that would work just fine. Somehow I have never realized that biopellets were a form of carbon dosing :p...

Glad to hear that you think the refugium would work. It will probably take me all of college to work out the kinks in the idea, but hopefully it will pay off. I was planning on having the water skimmed after going through the refugium, but I am still considering it. I think that before I make any decisions on that one I will test out the various methods of nutrient export (skimming, chaeto, ulva, ATS, DSB, etc) to see which ones work best. And of course, I do plan on doing water changes. I think I will set up a continuous water change system and have it change about 20% of the water each week; the benefit of it is that the volume of water added to the tank (through a doser) is so small that it doesn't matter if it is the same temp or pH or hardness as the water in the tank because it will never be enough water to effect an appreciable difference in the water chemistry. Also, continuous water changes means continuous nutrient export, and I won't have to do any heavy lifting, either!

Thanks! I am definitely doing my best to minimize the tank maintenance aspect. That is one reason I will be getting a betta fish. It will be a planted tank, but because I don't want the hassle involved with setting up a CO2 dosing system, I will just be using Seachem Excel. I do plan to fertilize, but I will use the estimative index method, so that I don't have to mess with testing kits after the cycling is over with. Also, because I will have to move the tank every semester (for the holidays), I am going to use basalt river rocks instead of sand and plant only plants that can grow on wood and rock, so that deconstructing and reconstructing the tank will be as quick and painless as possible.
 
I'm seriously considering going sump-less. I have a good volume of water in the partitioned left end of the tank. I don't plan to run a skimmer. The only reason I had planned to add a sump, was to return water to the refugium, but I realized I could just use my canister filter return instead. I like having all the water on the same level-less chance of mishaps. I've got a good closed loop setup with a Reeflow Dart. I plan no mechanical filtration at all. Since this tank is basically a large display refugium itself, I see no need.

There will be an additional refugium above the tank, so technically, the display is the sump. With no sump I won't need my coast to coast overflow, but rather than removing it, I could use it as additional refugium space. Some might ask,"why do you need a refugium if your display is already one?". The answer is "lack of predation". Hopefully, my refugium(s) can replenish plankton numbers as they are consumed in the display.
 
Oh yes, the Candy Basslet!-beautiful! You're probably aware of the Swiss Guard Basslet and Candystripe Hogfish as less expensive alternatives. They aren't cheap though!

Continuous water change sounds awesome! I'll look into that. If I never do a 'manual' water change again, I'm pretty sure I won't miss it!

The carbon dosing thing is intriguing! In effect, overdriving bacteria to consume more phosphate and nitrate, enhancing water quality. They recommend directing outflow of biopellet reactors straight to your skimmer, so it can export the bacteria. I wonder if eliminating the skimmer would feed micro fauna and sponges, possibly even allowing me to keep flame or electric scallops! It would be amazing to have a tank with thriving sponges and scallops! It's almost unheard of!
 
You're right, you don't need a sump, and you'll save a couple hundred by skipping it. They are useful, but if you aren't running a skimmer you can use the refugium above the tank for the other sump things like hiding unsightly equipment and dosing.

I did know that the Swissguard Basslet and Candystripe Hogfish were "poor mens' Candy Basslets", but IMO, they don't hold a candle to the real deal. Personally, I think it will be well worth the money.

Yeah, manual water changes suck. I can't seem to find the article in question, but I remember that he had 2 big 60g drums- one was filled with fresh salt water, and the other was for the old tank water. He had it set up with a doser so that the overall amount of water changed per week was the typical 10% of the tank volume, but each day the doser exchanged 1/7 of the 10%. Apparently the doser automatically split that volume up into several doses throughout the day, so that in the end a few mL were exchanged every few hours. Also, because his storage tanks were so big, he only had to refill them like once every month or so! It was a pretty sweet set-up.

The carbon dosing w/o a skimmer should let you feed the microfauna and sponges. I think the scallops would be stretching it, though... But I suppose you could try it and see.

And yes, Dr.Brain Coral, you have indeed died and gone to heaven, which is great news for Michael, because it means he won't have to worry about keeping his fish, sponges, scallops, or plants alive! After all, you can't die twice. :p
 
I can add a sump easily later, if I need one. I did track down that article, and others, about continuous water changes. Gotta have it! I don't think there's room for it in my living room, so I'll have to go 'remote'.

I was reading the description of a bio pellet reactor, and they said you could use the effluent to feed your filter feeders, or send it to a skimmer. I had read an article on scallops, and the author said the reason they starve in our tanks is because they feed on very small prey-bacteria! If I can pull off keeping sponges and scallops alive, well, maybe I"VE died and gone to heaven!

Here's a pic of the tank with the fake wall and root in place. I needed to put them in there to figure out where to build my berm. I'm going to avoid the 'ant farm' look this time with the DSB, so the berm will stretch all the way to the left end of the tank. There's a separate thread in the DIY forums for the fake mud bank.

picture.php

Next, I'll foam the overflow, then figure out how to hold it all tightly in place.

I'm gaining momentum!
 
Glad to hear that things are coming along! By the way, I don't know whether or not you have read this one, but I came across a mention of a study published in Advanced Aquarist a couple of years ago, "Bacterial Counts in Reef Aquarium Water: Baseline Values and Modulation by Carbon Dosing, Protein Skimming, and Granular Activated Carbon Filtration." Naturally, I immediately thought of your tank. It looks like it contains a plethora of information!

Also, some threads from the Advanced Reefkeeping section of the forum that you might be interested in:
reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2438547 (Skimmerlessness & Carbon Dosing)
reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2018134 (Skimmerlessness)
reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1706860 (Copepods)
 
I had read the 'Advanced Aquarist' article before, but it was good to reread. It's a bit long and technical, but there's some VERY good info in there.

One of my favorite points made was that carbon dosing worked great in the 'removed samples', but in the reef tank, bacteria levels rose then fell, reaching a sort of equilibrium with the bacteria consumers. My take away from that is, if I have a filter feeder population in my tank, a skimmer is not needed, and in fact, is counterproductive to keeping filter feeders.

They also pointed out that skimming only removed 20-30 percent of the bacteria. This makes me wonder if the carbon dosing crowd is having success because of the increased bacteria levels feeding their corals, rather than their removal of nitrate and phosphate!

Of course skimmers remove lots of other nasty stuff, which help us to maintain pristine conditions in our aquariums, so I'm not 'anti-skimmer', I'm 'anti pristine', at least for this tank. I just want to see if I can encourage natural consumers to do the work, rather than a skimmer. And if some of those consumers happen to be beautiful sponges and scallops, so be it.

Steve Tyree's book, "Environmental Gradient", on using sponges to naturally filter aquariums is also very encouraging to me. I don't plan to set up a 'cryptic zone' sump, or a sponge display aquarium. I just want to create conditions favorable to a few 'display filter feeders'.
 
Skimmers only remove 20-30% of bacteria? Interesting. I'd have thought they removed much more. What other "nasty stuff" do skimmers remove? I thought it was basically just plankton, bacteria, nitrates, and phosphates.
 
That's what they said, 20-30%. I would have thought more too. But keep in mind they were testing for bacteria only, so they weren't concerned with the other stuff. I certainly don't know what all the other nasty stuff is, but I'd start with poo & pee. I don't think skimmers remove nitrates and phosphates directly, but by removing the NS (P&P), nitrates and phosphates are lowered.

Interestingly enough, though, they said that heavily filtered tanks, with all the gizmos had only one tenth of the bacteria of a natural reef. The low-tech tanks had the same levels of bacteria as the reef. Again, they're talking bacteria only, which is only part of the 'soup'.

One other thing they brought up, was that since the skimmer's only taking certain types of bacteria out, it may have a deleterious effect by reducing the bacteria population's diversity.
 
I've been debating another fish. This one hails from the Carolinas down to the Gulf of Mexico. So, I'm not entirely sure this fish fits into the category of 'Caribbean'. Are the Florida Keys considered Caribbean? When I googled 'Caribbean Map', all the images include the southern tip of Florida, soooooo is it cool?

Before I spill the beans, let me preface this choice by saying I am modeling this tank to mimic a mangrove lagoon. It will not be full-strength seawater. Manatee Grass's ideal salinity is 25 ppt. So if my fish can go that low, that's where we'll be. If not, I'll find a good compromise that everyone can live with, say, like 27 ppt (1.020 SG).

This fish is considered to be a brackish water species, able to adapt to hard, fresh water, all the way to full-strength seawater. It's the Molly. There are pros and cons. Mostly pros, like cheap, harem-ready, a good algae-eater, and easily bred in captivity. They are live bearers and the fry are large at birth. I wonder how many females I'd need to keep up with Lookdown predation. Kind of a neat, food chain thing. Nutrients to algae to Mollies to Lookdowns! Sing it with me! "It's the circle of life"!

As for cons, they might just look wrong in my tank. I may not need another algae eater, with my snails, angelfish, tang and blenny.

So, any opinions on the subject?
 
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Oh, so it's a brackish tank! As far as whether or not mollies are Caribbean, I would say yes. I am of the opinion that the Gulf of Mexico:the Caribbean::squares:rectangles. (In other words: while everything in the Gulf of Mexico is also in the Caribbean, not everything in the Caribbean is necessarily part of the Gulf of Mexico.) Personally, though, I think they would just look out of place in a predominantly-saltwater tank. Still, it is your tank. And I am sure that the Lookdowns would appreciate them.

That said, I object to keeping live "feeder fish" in the tank. From a logical perspective, there's no good reason for that, especially when I wouldn't hesitate to feed my fish live non-fish, but there you have it. If you must feed a "predatory" fish other fish, personally I would say that you should kill those fish as humanely as possible before offering them as food. If for some reason you have a fish that must be fed live fish, then at the very least just put a couple in the tank at a time for meals; don't force the "feeder fish" to live their lives in constant fear and stress due to predation!

... Moral objections aside, from what I have heard about mollies, you wouldn't need a whole lot. Though to be fair I don't know what the Lookdowns' apatite is like- if they are anything like seahorses, I don't think even a hundred mollies would breed enough keep a Lookdown fed for long!
 
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