looking for a few pics of a carribean biotope tank

[dwd5813]

anyone out there got it? please include stocklist and husbandry info if you can. i would love to set one up if i could.

 

[Agu]

I had a Caribbean biotope tank until someone gave me free xenia and anthelia. Put it in the tank temporarily, guess I'll have to remove it soon .

Inhabitants are an N wennerae mantis shrimp, two flower anemones, a mexican turbo, and zoanthids in about 5 gallons.

Suggest you check out the livestock available at Tampa Bay Saltwater if you want authentic Caribbean critters.

TBS

 

[dwd5813]

cool looking tank, thanks.
anybody else?

 

[mhltcob]

I'm in the process of setting one up with hitchhikers from ricordea florida rock. It is about 3 months old and so far it is boring and just has coral wise what I think are Porites brasseri and Gorgonia ventalina (these are guesses of species based on location and physical features). It's in a 10 gallon right now, with a 96 watt powerquad P.C., about 12 pounds florida live rock, 15 pounds sugar sized sand, a ghetto refugium, and a MJ 600 for circulation. I am going to add another MJ 600 now that I am confident it won't create a sand storm. I will probably add a royal gramma in a few months as well. Both corals are growing quite well. If I deam the tank worthy of an upgrade, I am going to outfit my 75 gallon to be a caribbean biotope. The problem is all the fish I like from the caribbean get very big and arn't coral friendly (queen and grey angels, butterflyfish, and various parrotfish)

 

[mhltcob]

husbandry info: I add one scoop of biocalcium per day and drip kalkwasser to top off evaporation. I have done one 90% waterchange to combat a kalk overdose, but otherwise have just done 2x 20% waterchanges since its been set-up. Every once in a while I add a little pellet food to keep the amphipods/bristleworms happy. I am going to slowly start feeding coral food (rotifers/oyster eggs/cyclops) and critterfood-phytoplankton.

 

[dwd5813]

thanks for the reply.
what research have you done in preparing to set this tank up, and where did you look?

 

[mhltcob]

For places to research I am open to suggestions. So far I have looked at dive pictures of mine and others, nilson and fossa volume 2, Paul Humann's 3 volume caribbean ID set (this is a must have) and the aims coral search web site.

 

[mhltcob]

The hardest thing I'm finding is to make the tank interesting, while acquiring organisms that not only do o.k. in captivity, get along with eachother, but are found in the same location (in my case southern florida), depth, and area on the reef.

 

[dwd5813]

yes i agree. i have not done extensive research as pf yet, but it does seem that this would be difficult to make a real interesting tank for any other reason than the fact of what it is.