A reef 5min from my house!!!!

[aquaengine]

Was posted in Fish topic.
Ok. Hers is the situation. I live in St. Augustine Florida. We have lots of docks, marinas, and boat ramps in the area. Yesterday I was working with a friend refurbishing his dock. He has to replace the floating section which has been in the water for years. Within 5 min of looking at the old floating platform it was clear there were life forms i would never expect to encounter in this area. There was a full blown reef colony encrusting the bottom and sides of his dock. Everything from what looked like leather corals to branching corals and sponges and sea squirts. I’m not talking here and there, I’m talking about this dock is fully encrusted. Here’s the problem. He has someone coming in a few days to hall this section of dock off, but we have to pull it out of the water first....this is cretin death to all life. So my next step is preserving some of this life for my aquarium. Does anyone have any ideas as to a way i can harvest some of the corals and sponges and possibly some sea squirts. I think they are attached to the foam flotation devices. I have a 20g tank ready to go with skimmer and a good PC light ready to go. I only want to take what I can use.

 

[matttn1]

you might want to check first .. you might be breaking the law there in Fl

 

[nyfisherman]

It probably is illegal, so just don't go and try and sell the stuff and know one will be the wiser. :thinking: Take water from the same location and you might be better off. my two cents

 

[shoreliner11]

If they are attached to the foam you should try and break off (small amounts) of the foam they are attached to. If needed you can then shave off excess so that they're only attached to a thin layer of foam. Keep in mind that that you will need to temp acclimate a while to, I don't imagine Florida waters are as warm as your tank this time of year. Good luck with the harvest.
Aaron

 

[shoreliner11]

Forgot to add, if where the dock is fairly pristine, you could possibly try and do water changes with that water. Again, not sure of laws here, but your new inverts (especially sponges, tunicates etc) would benefit from the higher presence of phyto/bacteria etc which they feed on. If you're near a large city with a fair amount of pollution I'd probably shy away from it.
Aaron