o2zen - manatee county has its own rules? Please elaborate! I grew up there and learned how to catch stuff in school no less... so you could say the county taught me how to catch stuff there. The south end is where I usually go and I've never been approached by the police on that end in the all the years I've gone out there. The marine patrol checked my bucket for live rock once on the north end.
As far as a license goes I assume it's the same as any other fishing - you don't need a license if you're fishing from a bridge, wading, on shore, or on a boat with it's own license. You do need one if you're casting from a personal boat or diving. Tell me if I'm wrong anybody.
As I understood it you can collect 20 of the restricted species at a time of species on the list:
http://myfwc.com/marine/recreational/recharvestmls.htm
... and from the stuff on the list I couldn't imagine wanting to take more than 20 at a time.
For a cleanup crew the only things on the list I can imagine taking are the large hermits (thinsripe) and brittlestars. I don't know if the thinstripes are reefsafe, they do get up to like 5inches I think. You're not going to find 20 of them or want 20 though. There are however lots of dwarf hermits, some flatclaw hermits, lots of small cerith snails, and lots of nassarius snails - none of which are in any way threatened or on the lists I've seen, which is good since those are the ones you'd want more than 20 of. I've kept all those species in all my tanks for a long time and they've always been great and reef safe. Never any diseases or parasites from them either. It says you can take 1 gallon of macro algae- that's quite a bit of macro.
Non-cleanup crew stuff on that list that's in the skyway seagrass beds that I've caught and kept:: gobies, blennies, pipefish (one in my fuge), seahorses (years ago - you shouldn't take these IMHO), sponges (usually die), featherdusters (hard to extract), octopus once (need big tank), several types of shrimp, starfish (probably not reef safe), sea cucumbers (never tried in a reef). Filefish, cowfish, burrfish, puffers are very interesting but NOT reef safe. Also, there's lots of different macro algaes out there. I've got a big clump of some kind of red branching macro in my fuge from last year with my cheato. There are some larger snails that I've never tried in a reef because they looked likeley to be predetory to me.
To catch them go out at lower tides:
http://www.sailwx.info/tides/tidemap.phtml?location=2542
Nassarius snails - are everywhere in the shallow mud. You can walk around and pick them up, leave some food and pick them off it later, or sift through the mud (that's what I do). You can get some hermits this way too.
Cerith snails, dwarf hermits, blennies, gobies, filefish, pipefish, seahorses, everything else - get 1" boards and screen, make a 3x2' rectangle with a 6' handle attached to it with the boards and staple the screen to the box. Push that net through the sea grass lightly and you'll catch all that stuff very easily. Look on google maps and you can get an idea where the sea grass beds are ahead of time.
