my first nano

[harlequin]

I have set up a local caught nano tank. What on the south east coast eats algae? I have caught alot of things, right now just some tiny minnows(larva maybe) a filefish and a couple pipefish with a handnet from my dock. What eats algae though, the only thing I have found are the local versions of nassy snails of which there are hundreds of thousands of them crawling around.
Even growing up on the water, i did not realize the extent of the diversity of life here on the muddy GA coast until i got into this hobby. I found a fish the other day that looked like a piece of floating marshgrass up on end, caught it with a net and it looked like nothing else except a trigger in the face with an elongate body. Thats why I set this up.

 

[reef_magic]

how big of a tank is this? u probably wont be able to keep the pipefish alive very long. nassy snails will eat algae, get some of them

 

[harlequin]

Got a fix for the pipes already, after several days they already eat Cyclopseze and Daphnia, plus I rotate rocks with some hanging in the water and I catch 'pods as a treat for my fish regularly so its no biggie to let some go in the nano. Its a 10 by the way. Nassy's eat algae? When did that happen, I thought they were strictly detrivores and scavengers.

 

[reef_magic]

well, this site says they eat detritus only, but i ahve seen on several others that they eat both, ciouldnt hurt anyway to add a few. u could just buy some algae eaters...or do u want this to be a self-caught thing?

 

[harlequin]

I prefer self caught because local fish tend to have diseases that they are immune to that store bought stuff is not used to, Kind of like when the settlers first came to the US and disease killed off most of the Indians. Besides this is a low dollar project since I just bought a new(used) car and cash is short.

 

[reef_magic]

good luck then, got any pics?
this seems like a cool idea, but i bet there is a lot of drab colors. not too much colorful stuff off the dock is there?

 

[harlequin]

The water here around Savannah is very silty so the animals tend to be in that color scheme for obvious reasons. the pipefish are greyish brown and the filefish is darkbrown with some yellowish shadings, it is about the size of a nickel. I got them more out of curiousity than anything else. I wish I knew what that one black, floating marshgrass fish was. I will find someway to post a pic if I catch another. Puffer fish season starts soon as well, used to see them float by constantly. Have caught many small blacktip sharks and a bonnethead from there as well. I did see a colorful fish at the beach the other day stuck in a tidepool in a jetty. Kind of white with red stripes hovering over some rocks. I didnt have shoes or a net at the time though to go after it.

 

[reef_magic]

aw, poor little fishy
take some pics soon. do u ahve LR in there fomr the beach too?

 

[harlequin]

I have a little currently, composed of oystershells stuck together and I have some LR hanging in the water at the dock I will replace with. Also a good deal of macro algae. Not really any LR at the beach unless you call the big granite boulders of the jettys LR heheh.

 

[harlequin]

I have quite a few baby fish who are developing nicely. They look kind of like wasp fish but I am pretty sure they are just some kind of blenny. The filefish has turned bright green to match the macro, I have never heard of chameleon fish before but appearently filefish have the ability. I put a couple moonsnails from the beach and some Atlantic porcelin crabs in there as well. The rock I have hanging has not yet started to grow stuff on it yet but it is home to large numbers of blennies, grass shrimp and porcelin crabs. Oh yeah, i also put a piece of "stuff" in there which had a bright green anemone going on it. The shrimpfish I had I did further research into it and found it was actually an Atlantic Needlefish which are extremely common. I saw a big tasselated filefish at an LFS in

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Head the other day for $90, it was interesting looking but the one I found was way prettier heheh.