Local collection, Long Island Sound
- Thread starter gmate
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SueAndHerZoo
Active member
Wow, brings back memories of when I "rescued" a bunch of newly hatched octos from Boston University. Did you keep them all in the same tank like that the whole time? I had to set up separate enclosures for each one because they try to kill each other. It was such an exciting venture - I hope to try it again sometime.
Sue
Hey guys,
cool thread. I grew up in Oyster Bay, Long Island and have been on the water most of my life in both commercial and recreation enjoyment. I've also produced many television shows about local species here in the northeast. While the crabs may look cool, they are carnivores and are considered an epidemic here. They are nasty little crabs, best used for blackfish bait. I had reported on them back in my news days when they were first discovered on Long Island. They hitched rides in freighter ballast tanks in Asia and when they would pump out in the ocean on the approaches...out they came.
I fish offshore during the summer months and you wouldn't believe the fish we see in the gulf stream. We are 100 miles or more offshore. Find any piece of floating debris and you find tropical fish and Mahi. I've have raised small mahi but not for more than a month. Those fish need to swim. Small squid as well...crazy to watch those carnivores eat. Most of the fish I would collect are small, but there are bigger fish out there. Triggers do well, as do small pilot fish. And those have some real cool blue/black color.
I've taken and kept small sea robins, porgies, weakfish, and bass.
All with the cast net in the fall for peanut bunker. I have also pulled up deepwater coral that look like a polyp of some kind. White skeleton looking. I've kept them in the live well but never saw anything open.
Also feather dusters of some kind and barnacles are very cool.
Clams will span in your tropical tanks if they go from the fridge to the warm water. That was a mess.
Blackfish are also messy eaters and will eat any invert...for the most part. But they don't grow quickly. In fact, very slowly. A 15lb blackfish would be 15-20 years old or more. They grow fairly quickly as young of the year fish but up to about 6 inches. You can find the small ones in rocky tidal pools in the late summer.
Paul is a wealth of info as he's been doing this a very long time. Cooler water is key but it's hard to keep the local fish as they need to swim. They just don't last very long.
There is a ton of local algae out there too. Now is a good time to look for some of the colder water species and while the water is still gin clear.
Paul is right about the pods. I usually pick up a lobster pot float and shake that in a bucket. The diversity is amazing. Pods, shrimps, mussels, and who knows what else.
Hope you found some of that interesting. My boat is in Norwalk and can set some of you ct locals up for a collection trip. The Norwalk Islands are home to a ton of cool little creatures.
cool thread. I grew up in Oyster Bay, Long Island and have been on the water most of my life in both commercial and recreation enjoyment. I've also produced many television shows about local species here in the northeast. While the crabs may look cool, they are carnivores and are considered an epidemic here. They are nasty little crabs, best used for blackfish bait. I had reported on them back in my news days when they were first discovered on Long Island. They hitched rides in freighter ballast tanks in Asia and when they would pump out in the ocean on the approaches...out they came.
I fish offshore during the summer months and you wouldn't believe the fish we see in the gulf stream. We are 100 miles or more offshore. Find any piece of floating debris and you find tropical fish and Mahi. I've have raised small mahi but not for more than a month. Those fish need to swim. Small squid as well...crazy to watch those carnivores eat. Most of the fish I would collect are small, but there are bigger fish out there. Triggers do well, as do small pilot fish. And those have some real cool blue/black color.
I've taken and kept small sea robins, porgies, weakfish, and bass.
All with the cast net in the fall for peanut bunker. I have also pulled up deepwater coral that look like a polyp of some kind. White skeleton looking. I've kept them in the live well but never saw anything open.
Also feather dusters of some kind and barnacles are very cool.
Clams will span in your tropical tanks if they go from the fridge to the warm water. That was a mess.
Blackfish are also messy eaters and will eat any invert...for the most part. But they don't grow quickly. In fact, very slowly. A 15lb blackfish would be 15-20 years old or more. They grow fairly quickly as young of the year fish but up to about 6 inches. You can find the small ones in rocky tidal pools in the late summer.
Paul is a wealth of info as he's been doing this a very long time. Cooler water is key but it's hard to keep the local fish as they need to swim. They just don't last very long.
There is a ton of local algae out there too. Now is a good time to look for some of the colder water species and while the water is still gin clear.
Paul is right about the pods. I usually pick up a lobster pot float and shake that in a bucket. The diversity is amazing. Pods, shrimps, mussels, and who knows what else.
Hope you found some of that interesting. My boat is in Norwalk and can set some of you ct locals up for a collection trip. The Norwalk Islands are home to a ton of cool little creatures.
SueAndHerZoo
Active member
Me, too, Mike. I was about to jump up and wave my hands to say "take me, take me!" but then I thought, "awwww, I'd probably get sick and ruin the whole trip."
I'm fine as long as the boat is moving but as soon as it anchors, the stomach churns....
Sue
Paul B
Premium Member
LISound, thats cool. You can do the Conn. shore and I can do the Oyster Bay shore. I do most of my collecting of that small stuff in Port Washington where my boat is.
(I am also a Captain) There is some inrteresting stuff like large 6" mantis shrimp off of Huckelberry Island but you have to SCUBA at night about 30' deep. At that same depth there are thousands of large white, non phoptsynthetic anemones but they do not live in a tank. That soft coral LISound was talking about is very common in some areas, not real good looking as it is white and it also does not live in a heated tank. Being white I am sure it is also not photosynthetic. As a matter of fact, nothing in the Sound is photosynthetic as the water is very murky. The visability while diving ranges from absolute zero to about 3', usually somewhere in the middle so not much light diffuses and at 30' it is pitch dark, black, unless you go out east.
Under the Throggs Neck Bridge there are very strong currents, I mean stupidly strong as the Atlantic Ocean tries to flow through there twice a day. I have dove there which was a mistake and you only have a window of about 15 minutes when you could do it.
Nothing under there exceopt gigantic clams as no one has ever clammed there.
The tide pools are the place to collect and there are three. One is on Huckelberry Island and you need a boat. It is a tiny Island between New Rochelle and Kings Point just north of Execution Light. It was a big drinking and gambling place during prohibition now deserted and privately owned. It is the largest cormorant hatchery on the east coast. Nasty, dirty birds.
Execution Lighthouse, abandoned about 40 years ago and is now automatic. A private investor bought it for one dollar and I went there as a consultant with some other people.
View from the top
Water is not too deep here and there are some small wrecks that have some skinny, not bad looking corals but they also do not live in a heated tank. Yes I have tried all of this stuff at one time or another as I have been diving these waters since the 70s
This was takes about 10 or 15 years ago on the rocks at Execution Lighthouse.
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SueAndHerZoo
Active member
Wow ..... I'm awestruck. And to think I get excited when I can roll up my jeans and wade around up to my knees flipping over rocks and finding "treasures". LOL
Sue
Sue
Paul B
Premium Member
I am still awestruck when I do that even though I know exactly what I will find.
I can show you a place that is loaded with 1/4" horseshoe crabs, but I don't collect those as they don't do well in a reef. There are places loaded with diamond backed terripins and thousands of hermit crabs. There are a few fiddler crab cities (as I call them). Their habitat seems to be diminishing and so are the fiddlers. They are easy to keep in a tank with half land and half water. Grass shrimp I can get by the pound and also baby eels about 3" long.
LISound can take you out deep for the more interesting stuff that hitched a ride on the Gulf Stream. Gas is too expensive to get my boat out too far and it is also in the Sound.
This is the eastern Sound in Riverhead
This is the western Sound over the Bronx. I am anchored off Huckelberry island
Off my collecting tide pool in Port Washington, watching amphipods on the anchor line
Female fiddler crab
Rock crab.
extreamly common on the south shore
gmate
MASC Member
Me too! My girlfriend thinks I am insane. "It's all just mushy sand and seaweed, what the hell are you doing"
ME: OH LOOK A CRAB
DLANDINO
D.L. Heritage Rings
Thanks for all of this advice Paul! So, the nails that I see by the 1000's on the beach now and throughout summer, can you add these to our reef relatively safely? I know they are cold water animals but then I see them happy as...well...snails in the boiling tidal pools in the mid summer months. Wondering if they can have longevity and acclimate to our tanks long term. I assume that they are omnivorous as I think I see them on dead clams and crabs as well as on seaweed.
gmate
MASC Member
I've put 30 or 40 in my tank so far and they're all doing very well. Unlike other snails they tend to stay in the sandbed and don't really climb the live rock. But they go all over the glass and I haven't used a scraper since their introduction. I've also seen a decrease in Cyano. They are very slow and my hermits do pick on them. Paul has the expert answer I'm sure, but so far my inclination is yes you can use them. I didn't do too much acclimation, and it took them a day to really start moving around. They are far more active at night. The bigger snails (Periwinkle) move over the live rock but the little guys don't.
If I could make a suggestion, get more Periwinkles than the small ones - they seem more active and tend to be bigger. Paul, do you know what species the smaller mud snails are? They look like Coffee Bean snails but they're definitely not Nassarius (though there are Nassarius species that I've encountered on the short, just not as common).
EDIT: Answered my own question with some google'ing.
Ilyanassa Obsoletus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyanassa_obsoleta
http://www.manhattanreefs.com/forum/general-discussion/64384-long-island-sound-snails.html
Apparently mud snails do really well, but Periwinkles do not. So definitely grab the smaller mud snails!
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DLANDINO
D.L. Heritage Rings
Thanks for the reply! I am definitely curious to see others experience. When did you collect and add them? Did you do it in the summer months when they were already acclimated to the warmer temps or did you recently do it? Also, how did you introduce them. Did you scrub their shells at all to get off any gunk, drip acclimate etc or just add them straight away.
gmate
MASC Member
I actually grabbed them last sunday at Silver Sands State Park in Milford which is only 15 minutes away. It was low tide. I grabbed about 150 of them in a 5g bucket with sand and pods and some macro's. Water temp was probably 55 or 60, pretty chilly.
All I did was give them a quick RO/DI rinse and then plunked about 20 in my display. Waited till the next day to see if they would die immediately or acclimate. They seemed to do fine. Added more, now all of them move around. Excellent, excellent sand sifters. My hermits cleaned the gunk off of their shells. Some did get eaten in the process.
In the future, I would definitely get more or use them in the future. Even though a CUC is cheap on reefcleaners, this is cheaper, faster, and gives me an exuse to play at the beach in low tide and find cool stuff.
IDrawFish
New member
The snails you are talking about are actually called Mud Snails, Ilyanassa obsoleta if you want to get fancy. You can keep them in a reef tank although as anything from the sound it could be questionably safe due to pollution and such but they never bothered corals and actually kept the sand bed quite clean. I used to years ago they do make good sand sifters and will generally lay dormant until feeding time then swarm. I just drip acclimated them as with anything else.
Paul B
Premium Member
The "Nails" you should not use but the "snails" are fine and they live forever. I have some in there over 2 years but they are so common that you can literally fill a fifty gallon barrel of them in a few hours. Their name is Mud snail.
Periwinkels are more rare but you can also find them.
The mud snails are great scavengers and will eat anything including meat and fish that they sniff out immediately.
To acclimate them you can stand 10 feet from your tank and throw them in. They will aclimate on the way. Temperature does not concern them as they live under the ice or in boiling tide pools or even on hot damp rocks.
I don't scrub them, wash them, sandpaper them, soak them in acid, burn them with a blowtorch or use nasty language on them. Just throw them in like M&Ms. I have always had them in my salt tanks since Nixon was President. He even came collecting with me. OK, No he diden't. :crazy1:
There are more snails here than dirt. Nails also
SueAndHerZoo
Active member
LOL I really like this guy! :lmao:
SueAndHerZoo
Active member
I gotta tell ya.... I'm shocked that we are even having this conversation! In the past whenever the subject of "harvesting from local waters" came up people would emphatically state that the parasites, pollution, etc. would probably cause major disaster. Yet here we are in a 3-page thread about collecting and no one has said "NO - DON'T DO IT!"
So I guess I can now safely admit that I have been bringing home "treasures" for over 3 years now and, fortunately, have not had a bad experience. My sister lives on the beach in Branford (Short Beach - Hotchkiss Grove) and whenever I'm there, 90% of my time is spent in the water or along the edge poking around and looking for "neat stuff". I started with just bringing home "green crabs" to feed to my octopus and when I put a few in my display tank I got such a kick out of them I kept them there. Then I started bringing home snails and tossed (literally) them into the display tank. They were a welcome addition. I once came across a pool of copepods and grabbed a few soda bottles full but unfortunately they died on the way home (too warm?) and I haven't been able to get that lucky since.... but I'm still looking!
I foolishly don't acclimate or rinse my finds and so far, so good. Granted I only put them in the tanks that I haven't invested a lot of money in.... anything locally caught is off limits in my 92 gallon corner tank.
Regarding temperature and time of year, I have taken crabs and snails out of ice-cold water (last weekend) and have taken them during the intense heat of August.... all do fine.
I have a conch egg-casing in one of my tanks right now..... hopefully I'll get to see the miracle of the hatch and I will then bring hundreds of tiny conch's back to the beach.
Love this hobby. :thumbsup:
Sue
