chrismck97
Help me
nice and very cool
wild SPS corals, Marshall Islands
- Thread starter r-balljunkie
- Start date
r-balljunkie
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r-balljunkie
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all my collecting is done on walk in dives on the lagoon side. if im on a boat dive, its usually a wreck dive, and i dont want to hold the group up with my retarded adventures in looking for corals. i usually partner up twith my cohort, i.e. wife to go and look for corals.
theres only a few of us who keep reefs here. by far, im the most experienced of the lot.
ocean side (boat required) has some nice stuff too, but its much easier for me to grab my gear and hit the beach in 10 minutes. one spot i collect is in 45' of water, the other spot is around 60-70'...the place i call the coral junkyard. its impossible to dive the whole coral head in two dives. its huge, many stories high. its a really old lobophyllia head, with other stuff sprinkled in. it has to be really old, looking at the height of it. i dive it all the time, and find something new each time.
there's also the japanese tide pools, but ill save that for another post :inlove:
r-balljunkie
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you have household goods they ship out. we brought most everything, TV's beds, PC stuff etc. i had a 36" cube in the states, but that would have been too big (my house in texas is 3600 SF, had plenty of room) for our new 'free' house, which is about 1250 SF. i bought a new 57G illuminata which fits nicely and satisfies my reef keeping needs, and left it in the factory container. carried over all my other gear from my tank, denitrator, dosing pumps, skimmer, controller etc and brought it with us. i have a puny 250W mh right now....salivating over the maxspect G3 when it comes out, ill get it. my tank is in the same room as the TV and its rimless. i cant go with a 400W mh, or ill get a tan watching the tube
folks have asked me, why bring a tank, when you have the reef in your back yard. my thought process, im going to do everything i did back in the states...what i do here. i enjoy messing with my tank, and it gives me time to unwind and something to put my attention to. i have no regrets on bringing it with me.
syedjilani
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Subscribed....
r-balljunkie
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yes I can take video, the problem is delivering it to the internet. we have abysmal dial up here, supposedly 56K, but it barely registers 9-10K. everything is painfully slow. Just uploading these few pics can take a few hours. The fiber optic is in place, and the hardware has been ordered for high speed internet. Latest word is in place end of this year....was slated for the summer but hey, everything gets done on island time here.
Here's some macro/close up shots. try to look in the background and see the mountains of coral skeletons these formations are made of. easily 20'-30' high.
also a wicked look at a thorny starfish.
Today is perfect to walk the reef at low tide (-.2') to look for clams, which i tried last week (+.2'), no go, too high. i might take a quick snorkel to look for some live rock as well.
Enjoy.
r-balljunkie
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r-balljunkie
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another shot of the starfish.
r-balljunkie
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good question. a majority of the time, you don't. I speculate for every 10 clams you see, you only have a remote shot at removing one of them. if I see a clam, and I try to pry on it with a flat tipped diving knife, and I see that I can't get any leverage, I walk away. no sense in damaging a clam.
I'm still on the hunt for an elusive black clam. sooo many darn cucumbers, it's hard to spot one with the ripple and the reflection of the water.
Here's some more pictures from walking on the reef at low tide. I tried to sequence shots, what it looks like above water, what it looks like below water. I hope these are unique shots not normally seen and offers a bit of insight.
This is definitely ocean side. these corals are battered 24/7 by waves, exposed to the blazing sun at high tide daily, sometimes for hours. i generally do not get corals from this side. from experience they don't fare well in aquarists tanks. I did attempt to do some snorkeling in the 'Japanese pools'. Sections of hard floor taken out on the ocean side to expand the island, size wise. they are about 100 yards x 50 yards x 20 feet deep. Unfortunately they are rules to diving in the tide pool. the most important. make sure nothing got trapped in the tide pool that can eat you. four minutes into my snorkeling adventure looking for live rock, i spotted a black tip reef shark. my best guess is it was 6' long, but I think you tend to exaggerate the size when your trapped in a manmade hole with a shark. it was a short snorkel.
I managed one clam, one piece of an sps....not a big haul, but lots of fun looking.
more pics, with some tank shots of the cool zoas i found.
enjoy.
r-balljunkie
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Great Photos.Do the corals that look a bit browny in the photos colour up nicely in a tank?Ive always wondered what some of the plain looking colours would go like in a tank.Ive never snorkled since ive been keeping coral but do you actualy see they nice pinks greens ,blues when your actualy snorkling.I see the photos of corals in your tank seem so much more vibrant is it to do with the lights we provide etc?
r-balljunkie
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r-balljunkie
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no and yes
. im actually quite shocked to see some of these pics, and how the corals looked underwater. its a bit of a crap shoot sometimes, especially at depths, as certain spectrums dissapear the deeper you go. ive thrown some corals i got ocean side (the anchor ripped up some of the coral head) and i thought it was blah when i grabbed it. when i got it in my tank, it was ooooh aaaah.when im on the lagoon side, im looking for the coral with an interesting natural morph in color, or wicked PE. still have a way to go restocking tank....
c
Thairun
New member
Yap that is paradise, alright! beautiful as in your tank.
The clam just reminded me of where I ever stepped on few big flat rocks in low tide at Tioman Island of Malaysia. They are hundreds inbeaded in them but are small about 5-10cm.
Thanks for sharing the pics, love it man.
