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Ok so a lot of folks have been wondering what exactly I am up to with the new tanks and why we would take down the shrimp hatchery…… Well Among other things I will try to explain where things are at and where we are going with the whole thing. I’ll probably cross post this one so I wont have to do this more than once for the month as I just signed up for a couple of sites on a personal level and a lot of folks are asking what I do. – Hope this explains it By the way i got tired of putting in pics so if you want to see all of them click on one and it should take you to the gallery – otherwise it is http://myspace.com/tkiergen and click on the pics link under the dolphin pic and there are several galleries of photos – this article covers what the changes to the tanks at the house system are – didnt really get into why or how it all works – in fact just barely scratched the surface.

    Now along the way I have progressed from a kid with a couple of tanks wandering around gathering things that would make it in a small tank, learning what types of food they needed and how to gather said food. To today as an adult actually able to heal corals gathered dry from beaches as well as breeding most of the required food sources for whatever critters I am keeping. That being said an explanation of the new system modifications and why is in order.

   The old system worked well, very well but I think I can do a little better so the shrimp hatchery has been replaced with a 900 gallon hot tub filled with live rock and various plants.  This was perfect for the task.

The hot tub was already fitted with 4 1/2” jets and a full aeration bottom that we are powering from a 400cfm blower at night. I decided to run the blower at night only for the reason that my nitrogen cycle was getting just a little too far off and the removal of excess ammonia in the system can really be done by running the pump for as little as 2 hours a day.  Now this tank/hot tub serves multiple purposes in the system as not only are we able to cause corraline algae in a greatly accelerated process on the eco-friendly live rock we raise but at the same time we are able to continue breeding many types of shrimp, our own phytoplankton, zooplankton and various other micro-critters beneficial to the system not only as food but in a lot of cases as cleaners as well.

   Now the little air pump you see iabove is hooked into a breeder/display tank by marineland/tenecor and operates 24 hours a day in the lower chamber of the breeder rack

that little pump throws 60 litres of air per minute into the bottom left chamber of this tank which has a micro-aeration plate in the teeny chamber with the drains – both of which feed the hot tub. The chamber here that the air is pumped into contains first and second stage eco-live rock and is seeded with Tonga Branch that is covered in coralline algae and seeds the new rock well for us.

now out on the lanai we have pulled out the entire rack of 15’s and added in a 6ft breeder with 3 chambers and underneath there is a 300 gallon rubbermaid underneath it containing close to 1400lbs of live sand literally from all over the world.

 Ok i am going to skip the pics the rest of the way because this is taking a bit too long – I will revise this later and put the rest in if ambition sets in.

     What happens in the chain beginning at Tim's tank (first of the 30 gallon tanks, right next to the aragonite reactor we made from an old salt tank from an industrial water softener) is sort of weird but it works. In order to explain it I have to say that the aragonite reactor sees 1100 gallons per hour inflow from the main pump directly. That flow would normallly have that whole row of little tanks cookin and bookin but we control the flow rates inside each tank by both the number and diameter of pipes coming in to each tank (IE: the tank right after Tim’s has 3 3/4” pipes, 2 1” pipes and 1 1/2” pipe giving a flow rate inside the tank of 52 inches per minute (if you are doing the math on regular pipework don’t – these are “U”-tube gravity pipes not direct)). To further control the flow we have added a second overflow box to the sexy shrimp tank which picks its water through an undergravel plate which is under live sand from Greece, The North Sea and from 5000ft down in the Atlantic. It recieves its inflow water via another undergravel located in the tank next to it which has common Home Cheapo paving sand (silica) seeded with a cup of live sand from Lanai, Hawaii. That tanks inflow comes from an 1.5 inch pipe coming from the 20 on the iron stand which has the other overflow. Both overflows dump into the 6ft breeder above the rubbermaid in its left chamber.

   Now the rubbermaid has a stir pump to boot – 3600 gallons an hour pump from it back up to the right and left chambers of the breeder and there is the 1100 an hour leaving vai a pipe in the side of the rubbermaid. (I changed stir pumps since I originally posted the pics – hence the notes wont match). In the center chamber of the breeder I capped 1 of the 2.5 inch pipes and put a “T” at the top of the other one. bottom side I put in an elbow, 19 inches of pipe horizontal,another 90 (elbow) and ran a pipe vertically down into the sand within 2 inches of the bottom of the rubbermaid. This was tuned and intentional – there is about 200cfm of air getting mixed in which even with the pipe as far down in the sand as it is, it throws a crudload of bubbles up and it is definitely moving the sand around while not being too much. Now normally a bunch of air in your sandbed is a bad idea but in this case it serves a many fold puprose:

   A: it turns the sandbed into a filter of sorts

   B: It keeps the sand Oxygenated so we dont have 20 inches of hypoxic sand.

   C: it should completely move around all of the sand in the Rubbermaid over a period of 10 months to a year (rough math)

    D: since we have tons of live sand in the rest of the system – this area of well oxygenated sand provides nutrients to the sand in the rest of the system in the forms of broken down waste, diatoms and some very healthy micro-critters just barely above the bacterial level which in turn feed or in some cases feed from all the little critters that are bacterial. Makes for one hell of a healthy system.

     E: The live sands from all over the world, crushed shell and crushed coral we have in there help to buffer PH and calcium levels.- So does the rest of the system but this seems to be buffering to the point it is rivaling the calcium reactor.

  In reference to E above:  I think what is happening is that due to the fact that there is CO2 in the air and the amount of airflow going through these sands which contain aragonite as well as just a shade of crushed limestone….That it is acting as an aragonite reactor of sorts while at the same time the lesser flow areas are perhaps absorbing excess calcium. I have noticed that since this chain was modified our Calcium consumption has dropped dramatically. Prior to this mod to the system we were going through 4.5lbs Tropic Marin Bio Calcium and 1lb Calcium Chloride per month to maintain our calcium levels at 440 and our PH at 8.3. Currently we have dropped to 8.2 PH and our calcium levels have risen to 445 with only 1oz of Bio Calcium per week and that is really just being added for the trace elements contained in the mix from Tropic Marin. I should also mention that it is normal for a marine aquarium to fluctuate in PH from day to night and this has been the case in every system I have had my entire life – this system used to bounce from 8.2 to 8.3 every cycle but was always stable if samples were tested at the same time every day. Currently the PH is rock solid no matter what time of day I take a sample. Everything is doing well so I don’t think the non-fluctuation is a bad thing but I am holding judgment as there are variables to be considered long term; some of  which I am probably not aware of.

On the blue barrel we still have the little 25 flat with the 2 chunks of Marshall island rock in it – Live sand in there is compliments of a lady in Siberia and another in Antartica who sent it to us still in water. Its inflow is counted as part of the chain Starting at Tim’s – a paltry 120 gallons per hour which flows out via a 1” pipe directly into the rubbermaid. Its sole purpose in life is to keep those 2 chunks of Marshall Islands rock going – I am after the deep Blue Coralline algae and want it to spread throughout the system which it seems to be doing. My reason for wanting the blue is that it, like the Orange tends to make for a way healthier system than the pinks/purples that you see in every petstore (usually chemically induced I might add).  Naturally I seem to have pinks/purples all over the system as well as some really neat neon greens. Orange Coralline Algae is doing well from just the few samples I was initially able to acquire.

    Moving on Back to the other new breeder tank which sees flow directly from the main pump at 4psi through a 1/2” pipe inside a 1” manifold hitting both of the outer 2 chambers (right and left)both outlets at 1/2” we have a pair of 1.5 inch drains leaving the center chamber. I spent an afternoon getting these just right. One drains through 50ft of flex pipe into the big tank (1100 gallon tank) mixing water and air very well. The other drains into the regular drain plumbing with and intentional step made from 2 90’s which causes just that extra bit of crashing as the air mixes with the water prior to hitting the drain system. Now there are also 2 vents on the drain clustermess pulling an extra 50 or so cfm of air with them this is enough that 580ft later (through underground piping that loops back and forth for temperature stability year round)there are air bubbles coming out from a fully submerged 4” pipe in the pond.

   The Big tank (1100) has a 1” pipe blowing in at 4psi from the main pump and of course the pipe from the breeder on the rack I just mentioned. It leaves via a 1 inch fixed pvc drain and a clustermess I made from a 4” Tee, an end cap and some pipe – this has a 2.5” U tube feeding it from the tank. It exits the T into a pipe located to where its bottom is at the same level as the other drain. Now that dumps through an old pool cartridge filter that I gutted, put in a grid plate and filled wit 4 bags man-made lava rock and 3 boxes of real Hawaiian lava rock. this is a bottom feeding unit so where the air bleed was, I hollowed the valve and we shoot 60 liters per minute of air in via 6 4ft flexible bubble bars that I curled around and spiraled up the inside of the unit {I should note that this mod was what turned the pond from a coral garden into a refugium}. These are some fine bubbles and one would expect that it would bubble and foam out the vent – it does not, except the morning after we come in with a bunch of ghost shrimp or have dumped a fresh copepod culture in the system (which we do in a 30 gallon plastic barrel).

   Now the pond itself gets its water from the entire system and I should mention is teeming with life. There are abundant plants to support phyto/zoo plankton which are somehow propagating in the system as are copepods (although we have to help those along), various micro shrimp and what can best be described as teeny crabs that get no bigger than the average brine shrimp (someone finds them in a book I want to know what they are – we done confoozled fish and wildlife yet the original culture came from right behind Midnight pass – in the stagnate area where the jerkwad rich boy closed in the pass and calls that wrecked section of the intercoastal a “marine sanctuary” More like the marine equal to a stagnate still pond – used to be beautiful though now it all ucky crap and the corals that used to be there are gone – not even the most rugged Florida Ricordia mushrooms will live there – we have tried putting 10,000 in already). The pond gets all 5800 gallons an hour from the entire system dumped in via a 4” pipe to slow the flow. in doing this and using the ledges to our advantage we have a nice area for sponges under all that spaghetti grass and sea-lettuce (among other plants such as halimeda). Now the calcareous algae are not doing so well there but they are doing well enough in the rest of the system that we are not worried too much but they would be welcome. The sponges are doing really well. They say that 1 sponge, 1ft square can filter 1 ton of water per day (roughly 200 gallons) well we have 4 or 5 of our systems covered by that math.

   We had a ton of undesirable algae taking over the system – after adding in all the trick plumbing and a couple of air pumps it has stabilized, the ammonia levels are back to nil where they are supposed to be and everybody is happy. I should mention that somehow even though we use gulf water and yup sometime water right out of the basin by the marinas dock….. We no longer have a phosphor problem either. I was told that because we have finally found a combination of plants that consume it better than the hair algae we used to get that we are removing itt everytime we pull plants out of the pond. Also someone mentioned that the glow in the dark bacteria we cultivated a couple of years ago are still in our water (I was studying “phosphor trails” left by boats – ho the navy used to spot them back in the day). These little critters eat phosphor and later become food for stony corals – in particular elkhorn (pacific – atlantic do not do it) and birdsnest. Some acropora and heliopora consume the bacteria as well but not to as great a degree – soon as I get 2 more rack/display tanks like what I have out in the shed I want to pursue whether or not stonies eating phosphor consuming bacteria A: cause those stonies to be more susceptible to being overtaken by undesirable algae and B: are or rather “could be” the reason that in most of the better reef areas of the world with heavy stony populations have a tendancy to have almost no phosphor (IE: could they be filtering it?) while the water a few miles away will have more than measureable amounts. This is an area of curiosity for me  because at one time I use to go out and watch my propwash until it was glowing good and gather water in that area for the purpose of making some LPS species I used to raise look a lot more Luminescent just prior to sale (works like a dream for rose corals, frogspawn and some brain corals). It was only recently that i put together why it worked and I think that if verified….: Right here in Florida we could use that to clean up our waterways to some degree – especially out by Cayo Costa and the old Boca Grande phosphate docks where the phosphates are off the scale and the resulting hair algae in the intercoastal (especially in the backwaters in that area) could go away eventually giving us back the pretty waters we had in there when I was a kid.

   Ok so now I am rambling.

   Lighting wise we are using the following:

Shed:

there is a coralife 50/50 and an aquaglo flourescent over the hot tub

there is a MarineGLo and a coralife 50/50 over the display/breeder rack

Tims Tank:

1x 96W dual Actinic

1x 96W 10000K

My own design Tri Moon Moonlight LED’s pulsing at 1600 cycles per second (2x)

1x 1 watt regular “off the shelf” moonlight LED ripped out of a SunPod fixture

reflector is a custom kit (made with the help of Heritage glass – thanks Marty)in an outer Orbit housing

2 30’s and 2 10’s on that row:

2x 96W 50/50’s with an Ice Cap ballast able to do 2 more

1x 48” T-5 10000K 28W

Back of that row (the 2 at the end drain):

1x oddball 12” 90W Radium bulb (around 25000K according to manufacturer)

1x 48” T5 Actinic 02

1x 48” T5 20000K

6ft breeder above the rubbermaid:

1x 96W dual actinic

1x 96W dual daylight (10000k/20000K – custom order)

12x 1 watt Moonlight LED – homemade pulse circuit at 2500 cycles per second

6ft breeder on top of iron rack next to big tank:

1x 150W 14000K HQI Aqualight (wonderful bulbs)

1X 96W Royal Blue Actinic

1x 96W Dual Actinic

4x 1W Moonlight LED – no pulse circut

Over the big tank:

2x 150W HQI 14000K – (1 Aqualight bulb 1 piece of shit Coralife bulb)

2x Ice Cap Hqi Ballasts

4x 96W dual Actinic – this may seem an imbalance but keep in mind thses tanks do get real daylight albeit shaded by screen.

1x Homemade ballast handling all 4 actinics – hodge podge from scrunged parts

                     Production since Nov 9, 08  to March 10, 09

Replants/Beach rescues :

high and dry brought back to life and replanted in the intercoastal

57 stonies

191 sponge

7000+ softie polyps gathered from the roots of still moist plant debris on the beach

Bought and Planted:

   10,000 Florida Ricordia – was matched by another group as well

    2000 reef plugs with Florida “Sea Mat” Zoanthids – donated by an anonymous person.

    50 Atlantic Elkhorn over 20lbs each (guys wife was selling his system)

    12 boulder corals approx 4” dia. (from same system as above)

Propogated and replanted:

2x 5 gallon buckets of parking lot rock (from landscape place encrusted with local sponge.

57 Florida Ricordia

approx 400 :Sea Mat” Zoanthid Polyps

22 green tipped anemones (not aptasia – good ones original specimen was found near Blackburn point/ Just North of it on the grass flats near Vamo RD Oyster beds)

Fry from plant debris raised to at least 1 inch and released:

70+ pinfish

11 grunts

1000+ swimmer crabs

8 Leopard/spotted trunkfish

28 flat filefish (approx)

I should mention here that the fry are mostly accidental – we gather floating plant debris for the micro-crustaceans that we study as well as for teeny shrimp that we feed to the system. We let the fry grow, feed them very well on brine shrimp flakes and Tetra Min bulk tropical flake food. Rotifers are naturally growing/culturing  in the system as are various other good things (we even have krill breed from time to time – probably through sheer dumb luck/we don’t know what we are doing right when that happens). When they are an inch or so we let them go out in the intercoastal. In the case of the larger specimens we have like my 2 Gulf Velvet Killifish – one is blind and the other helps it they are never more than a couple of inces from each other and I figure they will be in the big tank well fed for a long time to come – we do let their offspring go about twice a year thoug. The Diamond killifish I have are breeding 3 or 4 times a year and the offspring are released whenever I notice they are big enough to damage our plants. The longnose Killifish were in my bilgewater after a hard run home one night and they have been with ne ever since – they have yet to breed. My brackish killifish/guppie cross were shipped inland where there is no saltwater so that no-one introduces a non native species into our waters The same reason that the Guppy/black molly cross breeds were shipped inland – note after crossing the Delta Guppy/Black Molly in light brackish water, staging them into salt water over 3 generations (5 breeding lines) I was told that even a 3 month drip acclimation would not allow them back in freshwater they were dying off in 8 separate systems at 1.018 salinity and if brought back up to 1.021 would actually recover in a day or so – breeding is as normal in 1.023 to 1.025 salinity / starve them for a couple of days and they do the hibbity jibbity. This was what I gathered from a few lengthy e-mails anyway.

  Production of Eco-friendly live rock:

coralline algae forming on most at 2 months

plant based fully in 1 month – I am noticing that a lot of the rock we got from the old quarry in North Port last year is going completely plant based then cycles to really nice coralline algae. It is an assumption that the moss algae (not the hairy stuff this is some really wonderful tight short stuff from the Red Sea) breaks up the surface of the rock (which is fossilized coral) and allows fresh calcium into the pores of the rock while at the same time releasing calcium from the rock itself.

The limestone rock from Gene (patriot lawn and tree service – 941-321-5353 servicing Sarasota and Charlotte counties had to help him out – he has helped us immensely) is doing well. While it is not progressing as quickly as we expected it has achieved plant based in the pond and is at the near fully encrusting coralline algae stages in the hot tub. It will not take the good moss algae but in the big tank the pieces we put in there have taken the moss from Tonga Branch and from some wierd Pacific rock someone out in Japan sent us. I noticed too that the addition of the Limestone in the big tank mad my radioactive coral wake right the heck up and he is healthy enough to take down any snail or hermit crab that so much as touches his base – he is all of 2 inches tall. Thanks be to Gene for having the limestone leftover from a job.

  I picked up some of what the rock place in the keys calls “screening” it is basically crushed coral and the guy let me pick up a couple of 150 quart coolers full of baseball size to showpiece sized (18-24”) rocks from piles they had there and this stuff is doing excellent – we are talking near full coverage with coralline algae in less than 6 months – I cheated with this stuff though it was seeded with Tonga Branch, Solomon Islands live rock, Marshall islands Live rock, Fiji ultra premium select live rock and uncured Haitian live rock all in the curing barrel at once with air galore for just less than a month and 2x 1000W 20000K metal halides hitting that poor 300 gallon barrel at once (any questions why that is no longer in use just go peel the melted plastic/rubber off those lights). I think that this rock being in the hot tub is what has caused the coralline to accelerate at such a rapid pace throughout the rest of the system. Calcerous algae love the heck out of this rock by the way.

   The Texas Holey rock sucks doggy doo doo – it has gained an excellent white coating but I think that is just from the water flow cleaning the crap – man made lava ock does better.

   Whatever the New Mexico rock is, it has done well – now buried in the bottom of the big tank under a bunch of Haitian and some Tonga Plate it has proven to be the fastest at attracting diatoms or perhaps they are latent in the rock, I don’t know but I do know that where I was getting a bunch of bad ones towards the base in the big tank, there are now only good diatoms (redneck explanation) in the substrate of the big tank – or at least way more good ones than bad ones. That is another thing most people overlook in a marine aquarium system – Diatoms are good yes but there are several types which are bad for a system and can even harm a marine tank – that is something for another writing as it gets quite lengthy – read Moe for a better explanation because I am only scratching the surface with my studies into the diatomatic world.

Corraline algae:

conservative number is about 3lbs per month total system production gain (predation has been factored in and total was cut in 1/2)

Waste plant:

healthy plant matter removed from Pond every week to prevent overgrowth = 38lbs wet average – wet is defined as picked up, allwed to drip and then placed on a sheet of styrofoam. Low was last week of Feb at 21lbs high was today at 44lbs. By the way if anyone is starting a refugium…..pop on by I can hook you up.

Stony coral growth.

currently at 1.7lbs per month

Soft coral growth rate:

varies from 1/2lb per month to this month at 2.1lbs – system has improved dramatically since Dec which was negative growth. (stuff was dying)

Sponge:

no real measure – rescue a lot from the beach dry and above the high tide line, lose some, gain some too much going in and out to bother keeping track of more than how many buckets survive.

                   Goals for the project for this year:

  OK my main goal is to get On Time fully operational again so I can use her to resume the free marine towing – that is my a-number one priority so the rest of this might not happen this year as she is costing me a fortune that I really don’t have at the moment. Reel Pirate is a wonderful boat but she sucks too much gas for me to do other than paid tows with her on my retirement income. There was too much downtime last year and I sent most of my regular customers away so this years goal is to get On Time to a “Turn the key I can count on her no matter what” condition. On Time at 36ft has 2800 miles range on 860 gallons at 12knots VS Reel Pirates gas engine has 65 miles range on 50 gallons (260 at 4.7knots though). Being a research trust we do not have to pay taxes on diesel purchases over 100 gallons which knocks off 1.20 (average) per gallon vs gas is never exempt from taxes.

   lighting needed:

1 72” or 96” LED fixture just to see if they really work worth a hoot. I have tried bars and panels over the years and they never do well on other than shallow tanks but there are a couple of companies like PFO Lighting that are claiming results superior to halides on far less wattage and lighting in the 10-12k range with full blue spectrum covered. I gotta find a used one and try it first though due to lack of confidence based on prior LED fixtures I dont want to drop that much money and find it was a waste. It would be wonderful to have a lot lower electric bill though.

2 70W Sunpods or HQI pendants with an assortment of varying color temperature bulbs to answer the question once and for all of what grows best under what temp bulb – I want to do time frames of lighting vs growth rates too.

One project I have to accomplish this year is sort of nerdy but neat – probably take me a couple of years to get any kind of repeatable results. They used to make 72 and 96 inch fixtures with 5 and 7 HQI double ended bulbs and individual ballasts for both. I want to find one of those old fixtures that uses t-5’s down both sides with the HQI’s in the center. Then I want to pull 2 of the bulbs and ballasts and replace them with little 50 to 75 watt mercury bulbs. and play with various color temperature halides in the rest of the fixture. My reason for this is many fold. In the late 70’s and 80’s I had excellent luck with Mercury lights alone albeit I had to be religious about shutting them off on time and not running them so much that I had algae all over the tanks. Nowadays timers are dirt cheap and with 150W hqi’s at nice high kelvin ratings i think that the full spectrum delivered from the Mercury lights would be more than adequate to give healthy plant growth in abundance while at the same time sy 17500k to 20000k HQI’s would give far better coralline algae growth – of course Zoanthallae production would be improved from the mercury lights perhaps allowing say your average softie such as most zoanthids to not expel their Zoanthallae thereby not bleaching under the power of the high K HQI’s – its just a theory but if I can find the right combination joe schmoe home aquarist may not in the future have to have all his softies at the bottom of the tank to keep the halides from bleaching or killing them. Billy Bob breeder may be able to do multiple tiers of softies or even Gonipora (flowerpot corals) without having to worry about “burning” his crop.   I dunno if it will work or not but in all my studies of lights I have not seen anyone playing with mixes of bulbs like this – other than a couple of guys mixing halides and sodium lamps but I am pretty sure the plants they were trying to grow were not aquatic

Pumps -

I want to play around with 4 Hydor Koralia Model 4’s on a wave timer and do a fair comparison vs a pair of 1 inch inlet/outlet SCWD (switching current wave director) devices. I have played with everything from toilet tanks with Bournemann flush devices to Turbelle wavemaker pumps to PVC crosses on PVC pipes with 45’s coming off of them and while I am 1/2 sold on the SCWD’s there is that bit of doubt from having played with other devices which clog or get calcium buildup over time and fail. There is a bit of doubt with the Koralias as well from having depended on wavemakers and electronic timers in the past and having seen failure after failure of either the timers or the pumps – I have been playing with one Koralia for about 6 months now and think they are reliable enough to give it a whirl. I have watched a SCWD device in use at a local pet store and think I know what they are doing wrong (too much pressure flowing in or so it looks like when I see 18psi leaving their pump).

  Getting the Homeless project back in full swing.

I have been getting the occasional call from this or that marina and some private parties – most of which I have been telling to go to Boat Angel Ministries due to the fact that I had so much down time so i have probably lost most of the regular marinas we used to have donating derelicts to us but I think once On Time is running or I just break down and scrunge up a regular diesel towboat I can get back to giving away boats to homeless people. Where 2007 we had 61 boats come through and were able to give away 27 as useable for people to live on (we always make sure they get some sort of registration in their name or in one case in the guys moms name) and we gave away 7 just for folks to mess around with – the rest were total junk and were either cleaned of all oils, engines/trannys removed and sunk in over 200ft of water or cut up and we paid the dumpster. So far this year we have given away 3 – mostly due to we were down so long most of the marinas in the gulf coast probably think we quit or something. I have to get that project going again – it was a lot of fun and helped a lot of people. I cant afford to do it from Reel Pirate (or any other gas engine boat) though. and she cant pull much over a 30 footer without hurting herself.

   Getting Tim a descent tank setup.

  Tim is a wonderkid and from what I have seen him do in his little 30 on that row as well as a couple of other tanks he is a propagation genius as well as a self contained eco-system nerd with great potential. Sometime before he loses faith or interest i want to get him a couple of 4ft displays like the one out in the shed – but only the bottom 2 sections of each and see what he does in them. I think he could be a boon to the intercoastal as he is extremely quick to spot drying plants with polyps attached to their roots on the beach and he is very fast becoming expert in his abilities to place them in proper flow and light while at the same time making sure that non-native species do not attach to the rocks or reef plugs he is attaching stuff to (well nothing that cant no one say didn’t come in in some mega freighters bilge water – meaning he is very conscientious). At the same time I want to get 15 or 20 full sized (4’x8’)sheets of lexan and some lexan solvent so that I can put together a couple of the old fully self contained tanks I used to make for hospices and old folks homes up in yankee country. just to see does he take the rest of the sheets and copy what I did or does he improve on it. Hard to beat a self contained 80 or 90 gallon near complete eco-system but I really think he can probably do what I never could – come up with one in the 20 or 30 gallon range that would be just as maintenance free. I cant seem to do a small one that does not have to be torn down a couple of times a year or filter media removed and replaced or water cycled out and changed often – I can do large ones that it islittle more than top it off with freshwater every now and then and maybe add some salt to keep the salinity up every 6 or 8 months though. Perhaps he can figure out how to come up with a smaller system that will work as well – he seems to be oriented in that direction far more than I ever was.

Anyway its 4am, I am merely rambling – those are the stats for where the project(s) are currently at and where I want to get them this year. Probably meet about 1/2 my goals on my budget but hey I am at least setting goals for a change and the progress this project in general has made is wonderful – Our friend Minica over at Pro Vita Pax Marine is improving our area, we are sort of improving our area and other groups and individuals are learning how to help our waterways without breaking any of Floridas laws. Remember – if you are going to copy our project or do something similar NEVER put a non native species in Florida waters. NEVER harvest from one area and move stuff to another – you are helping much more by raising polyps off of plant debris or doing like some of our mystery donors do and buying 100 percent Florida native species off of Ebay and planting them in the intercoastal.

   I dont have the new GCCR space up but the old site is still at http://mysite.verizon.net/dawino6260 it is outdated as all heck because I just transferred the text from our original site over there for parking purposes BUT if you click on “how you can help” you will find some ideas on how to go about things in the right way.