Hi members of 3reef

Hi, I live in south Louisiana and have a eight year old 50 gallon aquarium. My aquarium once was full of hard corals and interesting specimens but everything in it died from hurricane Katrina. Ever since then it has been sitting neglected in a bedroom out of site. Although recently I took a trip to the keys(something I did often when it was running) and have rekindled my wanting for a reef aquarium. When I was in the keys I bought a slurp gun and was able to catch 2 queen angel babies, One french angel baby that could be a grey angel, a rock beauty baby, 2 molly miller blennies, a barred blenny, a hairy blenny, 3 damsels, a mated pair of coral bandit shrimp, a green anemone with pink tips, brittle stars, blue legged hermits, red legged hermits, 1 decorator crab, and some snails. I changed the water and replaced the protein skimmer and power heads and everything has been doing great for a few weeks. I don't plan on adding much to the aquarium for a time because of hurricanes and I am planning on upgrading to a 180 gallon tank with a sump/refugium and would rather not have to deal with moving lots of specimen.

 

Welcome to 3reef

You Just put all of that in your 50 ?

How long where you in the keys for? Thats alot of stuff I hope you followed all the rules and regulations set by fwc.

 

Welcome to 3reef.
How cool that you can go "shopping" out in the deep blue sea.

 

+1! Totally agree!!!
Recreational Harvest of Marine Life (Aquarium) Species

 

lol, yes everything is legal i found out after one of the angelfish was under limit :-/ but he grew so he's limit now but hey I can't do anything besides flush him once he's 1000 miles from his bridge leg. I was in Vaca key for 10 days on a family lobstering trip. Most of the critters are very small and algae eaters so they are doing great in a algae ridden aquarium I still have 4-5 inches of fish space for the recommended amount. When my tank was running we took trips to the keys for collecting, additional to buying from our local aquarium shops

 

When people refer to inches of fish per gallon, they are referring to when they are full size. The 180 you are planning is not even big enough for any of the angels (except the Rock Beauty). The rest are fine of course. I would suggest selling them to your LFS as soon as you can! Other than that, very cool that you were able to catch them and congrats on getting back into the hobby!

 

Oh yes I know I can't keep them. I do not plan on keeping them for longer than a year at the most (besides the rock beauty. If he survives, I have read everywhere that they do not do good in aquariums) Although I have handled baby angels before of simular size and they really never grow that large in the tank. In the past I kept a wild caught french angel for 2 1/2 years before it died in Katrina and it really only started getting to big right before it died. I usually have been able to trade the angels for coral with my dealer.

 

Welcome to 3reef! How far out did you have to go in order to legally catch them?

 

Welcome. A lot of that stuff is close. I go snorkeling all the time in the keys I live close. But never tried to catch anything. I do know in Florida you just the $17 lic and don't mess with the hard stuff and fwc is pretty cool about it. Most of time they want to see more than investigate lol

 

What do you mean by $17 lic? I was always told that you can only take one Ricordea mushroom and the rest was illegal?