My attempt at a native tank

Are the beaches you find them on not protected?

A special permit is required to collect and keep duplicare pectore
But please dont try to keep 2 specimens in the same tank.
They get soooooooooooooooo jealous and will fight to the death over calceamentis

Right now this thread has the potential to get very weird very quickly

was double titted Anemone blond or brunette ?

Strangely she is blueish, but she has the desired milk-white gazounkers.

some of the new additions from our last fishery with Crusty:








Anemone on Sea Squirt

Here some pictures of the LED lighting system that I installed recently.
It consists of 4 LED strips of 2.12m each in cool white and two strips RGB.
The strips are waterproof to IP67 which is helpful in this environment.
The RGB strips allow for control of the colour tone of the total light output. We can make it warmer (red) more vibrant (green) and cooler (Blue).
The blue channel also provides moonlight with minimum intensity when the moon is out.

The cool white is programmed to gradually come on a few hours after dawn and dims of to zero a few hours after sunset.
All this is controlled by the Apex controller.
To see how easy this is to program see the lights program:

Cool white:
Fallback OFF
Set OFF
If Time 09:00 to 10:29 Then WhiteUp ( which is a ramp up routine)
If Time 10:30 to 20:30 Then SunnyDay (full on)
If Outlet Cloudy = ON Then Cloudy (This is a random cloud routine)
If Outlet Cloudier = ON Then Cloudier (A random even darker could within the cloud period)
If Time 20:30 to 22:29 Then WhiteDwn (Ramp down to zero)

Blue:
Fallback OFF
Set OFF
If Moon 000/000 Then ON (switches Blue on at 5% when moon is out. An editable moon table is in the controller)


The Apex controller can be controlled from any PC or Ipad in the house as it has a web server built in.

Also a picture of the tank with the old T5 lights and with the new LED lights. You see the tank is more evenly lit due to the fact the LED strips cover the full length of the tank.
You see the light output is significantly more then the 4 T5's

The lED strips are all sourced from Ebay as are the dimmers and the 12V power supply.
Total costs on LED hardware €120--

I am very happy with the result. Very controllable, low power consumption, a lot of light and also very important for a native tank: WAY cooler than the T5 lighting. The LED strips do not generate any noticeable heat. Cool to the touch.
Not enough light I would think for a coral reef tank, but plenty enough for the native tank.
The cool white and the moonlight have a wonderful effect on our green anemones. They light-up in a irradiant green.

Anyone wanting more detail, just ask.......

The self adhesive strips are applied to the canopy top



The apex controller with its controlled sockets left, power supply with two dimmers on the right. (Still to be wired up in this pic.)


Playing with the colours and programming..... The Old T5 still on top


The canopy placed and light on.

amazing looking tank. as I've said before, I have no real desire to keep tropical marines but this is something i'd love to give a shot some day

Looking Good. Bet you are pleased with it.

full res picture if your click on the link

It gives a nice overview and still shows all the details. Bit over exposed but it'l have to do..........

Full res aquarium picture

The light is more uniform, and not as bright, which is perfect as we don't get the tropical sunshine.
I think I will try this myself.

Well Crusty, Indeed my wife and I are very pleased with the result.

You have played a vital part in this equation. Your posts on your native tank gave us the initial idea for this choice, and your subsequent help has been instrumental in getting where we are today.

And as you said, the roaming of the shore and shallow waters is very enjoyable and develops into some kind of an addiction which MUST be satisfied from time to time. It is very much an integral part of the enjoyment of keeping a native tank.

Many thanks for that and we are looking forward to meeting you and mrs Crusty in the not too distant future.

On another subject, any idea on how to feed the large sea urchin? It is moving around and seems happy, but we can't see how it would survive long term if it is not properly fed........

There is no doubt that the Crustys will be back in the Bearra in the near future. Mrs C is making plans already!
And Connamara Johnny is very interested in your Bees and their care.
Strange that the two fishing gentlemen of the sea are both called Johnny. They have never met but have so many friends in common!

Thanks for your kind comments Joukeder.

On Feeding the sea Urchin, little pieces of seaweed, - Sea Lettuce is good, as is Kelp, Or sheets of Nori. You can attach them to their spines, close to their mouth.
They will eat microalgae from the glass or rocks too. And they will eat fish pieces, including "crab sticks"

That's a great looking tank. Had one similar and lots of success with inverts but I always found it a problem to get mid to top swimming fishes besides two spotted gobies and small wrasse for native marine. Any advice?

I must say that our fish do swim at all heights in the tank. Gobies mid to bottom and venture up sometimes, mullets mid and top, wrasses everywhere, the connemara suckers swim at all heights although they tend to swim at the bottom at feeding time. The blenneys mid to bottom if they are not hiding in holes etc.

@Bullfrog,

Sorry to report that both Horse mackerel have perished whilst in our care. (and we'r not the HSE)
They were doing great and growing fast.
At first one just disappeared with out trace. The smallest one. We suspect it has fallen victim to the new blenney on the block at night. The larger one was clearly distressed by the disappearance of his mate and swam around as if looking for her. Three days later I found him/it on the glass cover all dried up and stiff.
Now most of the tank is covered with glass except two area's of 5x10Cm. But he found one of them and jumped out.

Clearly an act of desperation as a result of emotional stress.
I think we should make suicide more openly discussed...

Lovely looking tank, it really "pops" in that last photo. At first glance I would not have thought it was a native tank at all.

Andreas

Love the tank mate brilliant job!

Stephen M.

Stunning set up

Well done on a wonderful tank, you have lifted native marine to a new high level.

What about native marine plants, any success? Mine all died and there were some really nice species, velvethorn etc. Everything else flourished, snakelocks anemones etc. so I doubt if it was lighting. How has the local seaweed and plant life gone for you?

Seaweeds have a limited life in the tank. Supposedly the lighter greens survive better, but they are eaten by the fish. We find the stubby light brown varieties survive best.
When we see decay we tend to cut the decaying part to delay ultimate removal.
We like to find them grown on a stone, which helps in their survival as they are not uprooted. The fish love the seaweeds they pick in them all day and hide in them at night.
Our latest addition is the rock at the far right in the full res. picture above.
Certainly an area of improvement and trial and error.

Great setup you have there! Wow! Love your small wrasses and the purple sea-urchin is deadly!
Same here with the seaweeds, best are the ones that are attached to rocks. I have some rainbow wrack that was pulled off a rock that has just finally started to grow. Also Red Soldiers String and some other brown ones are starting to grow. I think its very much a seasonal thing, that you have to pick the ones that flourish in nature at this time of year. Its an exciting challenge this seaweed growing.
You probably know but there is a fantastic blog of a norwegian who had huge success growing seaweed, its a very good read and mighty pictures.
www.jonolavsakvarium.com/blog/index.html

Many thanks Addictus.
Indeed the plant growing is a challenge that we are only getting into. Thanks fort your pointers.
We suspect that it is also important in view of the filtering to have healthy plants and growth in ones tank.

We have difficulty controlling the nitrite. It seems we have the bugs that convert Ammonia into Nitrite, but not enough bugs to convert all the Nitrite into Nitrate. So our Nitrite is slowly rising all the time. This week we did two 60% water changes in two days and it's back to .2 now. Still higher then we would like to see....

I am new to the whole marine side and not a scientist or anything but I think like you say the plants are important for maintaining water quality (as they are in freshwater aquaria) but I think they consume nitrate. I wouldnt know how to specifically target nitrite but maybe this post of a very interesting blog might be of help...
nativemarine.blogspot.ie/2011/09/sand-filter.html
What kind of sand do you have? Maybe adding more of it might help as I think a lot of bugs live in the live sand especially when collected from a good spot on a beach.

Bacteria grow more slowly in colder water than tropical , so give the filters a chance to catch up.
Also reduce the feeding a little bit, not forgetting to rinse the frozen food before feeding.
This time of year, most of the native algae / seaweed is dying back, so keep an eye on it in the aquarium.

Friends,

It is infinitely gratifying to get feedback if problems arise. Thank you very much..

Happy to report that in the last week Nitrite has gone down without more water changes. The filters have finally cought on to the level of life/waste in the tank. It's on .1 now.
Big sea urchin is doing fine, moving about in the tank and pushing the in-tank filter aside in its stride.
Unfortunately most of the seaweeds had to be taken out as they were near decaying stage. Waiting for spring to put some new in.
Will post some video footage shortly.

Thats great news Sure you where happy to see that different colour coming up on the test What did you do to solve it? Feeding less or did it just happen? Great looking that sea urchin, I have some tiny ones compared to yours and they seems to be moving small rocks by trying to squeeze through gaps, was failry surprised by their strength