Critters from the sea
- Thread starter jmaggi
- Start date
27mtaylor
Member
I tried it once and they all died... I'm not really sure what happened to them, but they just started disappearing. I had a cool pipefish and it lived for about a week before he turned up missing. Probably wasn't the smartest thing I'd done for my tank, but that was when I first started...
ophiura
Active Member
Well, from where are you collecting them?
If it is temperate water, odds are you will not succeed getting them into a tropical tank.
If it is tropical - you may be OK but do check into legal issues.
Also, only take what you can keep. NEVER return anything to the ocean. Only take what you can definitely identify - not all snails are algae eaters; most crabs are not friendly.
When you take animals from the ocean - via the LFS or on your own - you defintiely have an obligation to buy or collect only what you can really keep, IMO.
If it is temperate water, odds are you will not succeed getting them into a tropical tank.
If it is tropical - you may be OK but do check into legal issues.
Also, only take what you can keep. NEVER return anything to the ocean. Only take what you can definitely identify - not all snails are algae eaters; most crabs are not friendly.
When you take animals from the ocean - via the LFS or on your own - you defintiely have an obligation to buy or collect only what you can really keep, IMO.
chipmaker
Active Member
Sure you can, but if its a good ideas is another story altogether. When I lived n the coast I had a tank we setup consisting of nothing but critters my youngins would catch or we would pull up in nets or find while diving. Even used the water and sand right out of the Gulf of Mexico......they all did just fine....I would certainly not catch critters and put them in an established tank of store bought critters though. It may work and it may not.......but then it certainly should not be any worse than say buying a fish from ***** and putting it in. Just make sure whatever critter your intending to keep is legal to have and remove, and that its suiutable in regards to temp and such in your tank, or that it does not have a special requirement that may mean keeping it healthy could be frutile.
sharkbait9
Active Member
How are they caught? My fist tank that I had were all from the altantic when I went scuba diving. I never hooked or net them or used a bang stick. I would recommend a slurp gun, that’s what I used and most likely when I get my big tank, I’ll use it again. I have gotten some nice samples from south Carolina when I visit my sister and my home state of new jersey. People find it hard to believe but in jersey around late September, October even early December, Jersey gets tropical coming up in the warm currants. For the most part if you have a qt tank the I don’t think you would have a problem with it unless your using a slurp cannon and go for the big boys and girls who can‘t adapt to being box in glass. The other thing to is if you are going for wild caught you have to watch how fast they are coming up to the surface, fish can get the bends like humans the only difference is their stomachs come out of their mouth and the float bladder burst and kills the fish. I had my 265 gal set up with a couple of wild caught and they were fine their colors got brighter actually gave them in at my lfs when I moved and broke my tank down. Its more a question of ethics then anything else but for the most part all fish started off undomesticated and we figured out how to breed and this was in the past what 10 years