JamesL

Well don't say we didn't warn you

Actually, I heard the air craft carrier tour is pretty cool. Though, I think it is not too pleasant on super hot days.

No prob (and sorry for the long reply .. was eating lunch, so had the time).

Freshwater/ponds are so much more forgiving ....

And I like the way you are thinking about the seahorses! Hmm ... corporate mascots ....

Darn it! Now I want a pond. Do they make a dog proof fish? Do you have a UV filter on it? What kind of pump do you use? Do you have any filter?

This is just payback for all those great pictures and stories you post of your seahorses and eels ... I sooo want a seahorse tank right now. Especially when seeing the baby seahorses a guy on nano-reef has been trying to rear.

Let me preface all of my answers with: This pond was set up last November when we moved houses. We had a small 40 gallon pre-molded pond at the old house. We brought the fish and plants with us. We literally bought and setup the pond the week we moved, as I felt back for the fish (only 2 then) being stuck in a big rubbermaid container in the garage.

Our dogs have pretty much left the pond alone, and so have all the deer. Raccoons do come and mess with the plants (I need to re-pot some), but the pond is deep enough and has enough hiding places they haven't nabbed any of the fish yet <fingers crossed>.

There is no UV filter on it. I am using an old powerhead (I think the one that came in my aquapod 24!!) to to circulate water. Basically it is in one of those Bio-filter boxes you see at Home Depot/Lowes for ponds. It has bio-balls, and two filter pads in it. The output of the pump gets snaked out of the pond and into the back of the blue pot and overflows back to the pond. I probably could use a much stronger pump, but I don't want too much water turbulence. Water lilies like calm water.

To tell you the truth, I probably should rinse the filter pads out every month ... but I think I have done it once in the past six months

The pond is really low care. We feed the fish maybe once every couple of weeks ... they have algae and bugs to munch on. And with the semi-consistant rain we have been getting, I think I have "topped" off the pond once in the six months (I expect that to change as we push into the 90's).

Ok all of this talk is motivating me to clean up the pond this weekend (clean the filters, re-pot some plants, fertilize the plants, and remove dying lily leaves).

I went there a few years back when I visited Corpus for the first time. It is a decent aquarium, but nothing spectacular (like Sheds in Chicago or Monterey Bay in California). They have your typical fresh and saltwater areas. There is a dolphin show also.

Actually, just thinking about it, Moody Gardens in Galveston was really cool (and better than TSA). They have different "pyramids" which house a rain forest, an aquarium, and some other stuff.

Thanks for the pointer! It is good to know there is a pond club, though I doubt we would become members (we do own a pond). The reason is we really don't do much with our pond ... we built it, stocked it, and it takes care of itself (not like a reef tank ). It mainly is a "water feature" in the landscape ... even though we will probably add more (ponds/water features) down the road.

So it seems at least a few people here have ponds ... post up some pictures! That is the best thing about these pond societies, the pond tours they do. We love seeing other people's ponds.

Here is ours. It is a 100 gallon pre-molded pond. It sits on top of the ground, and all the rocks were collected from around our yard. There are 4 fish in there: 1 comet, 1 fan tail, and 2 butterfly koi.

Click the pictures for a larger view.

Yeah! I need more to move me out of third place

I agree with Noodle. I use razor blades every week to get the algae near the sand bed and where the magnet scraper can't get to.

Nice looking eel!

Sigh ... now I want one again (and a seahorse tank, and, and, and ... )

Hmm .. could be. Is there anything in the tank that could be nipping/fighting with the fish? I doubt the eel would do that.

BTW, gorgeous trigger!

Hmm.. you sure it just wasn't damaged from being caught/transported/released into your tank? Sounds like you have everything going right ... good water quality and the fish is eating. I bet it heals on it's own soon enough.

Edit (6/29/07): I am changing my submission! I like this picture better....

Sun Coral (click picture from grande size)

My main concern would be is the information still accurate? I found a marine aquarium book that I had when I was going up, and when I was reading through it, I was baffled at how much information was wrong. The hobby has come a log ways since 1988 and we are continually learning more information and better practices.

Also, you mentioned that the publication has been renamed. Does this mean that they are still producing the magazine? Do you have the rights to post the articles from 88-01?

If so, go for it.

Yeah, out of date information would be a problem (if the magazine articles could still be found). Thus making and even stronger point to having pointers to more current information.

But I don't want to detract from current web sites providing good information (like this site).

My initial reaction was to bring it back ASAP. Information is no good unless it is organized. Then I thought we could some how host it here on ARC like RC does with some articles. Possibly attracting more traffic to our site.

....

I still think you should talk to starfire, Andrew, about making the index at least a sticky in a forum if not a full fledged page here on ARC.

Good ideas .. and this sorta ties in with some ideas I have for this. While I was not looking for a place to host it (I already have a company to host my software business web site), I was thinking about expanding on the information to include links to web sites (ARC, nano-reef, etc) that also relate to specific "index entries". So say there is a discussion here about how to drill fish tanks. Well then a link to that discussion would be in the index under "Fish Tank Drilling" (or something like that). Thus it would drive traffic towards this site.

In the grand scheme of things I would imagine this being a user driven web site, where people could submit pointers to such things. But the more I type this out, almost sounds like a wikipedia site Which just begs the question would this be a lot of duplication of material already on the web.

Take all of this with a grain of salt .... just ideas I have rumbling around in my head. This could amount to a bunch of time to do that I might not have

You bring up a good point about printed material and this hobby. I rarely turn to magazines unless they are brand new for information. The problem is the opinions of what techniques are best and the acceptable methods of implementation change. It is hard for print media to keep up with the latest trends.

Agreed.

The big question here is, can people even find the magazine you are indexing?

And that is the big catch there. I used to own all those issues I had index... but I have since gotten rid of them. AFM used to have some of their articles on-line, but I can't find them now (in the brief search I did) since that have changed names/web site to Aquarium Fish International. I think the lack of people being able get the magazine also prompted me to think on what other resources could be "indexed".

Have you been to:

Barrel City USA

15000 S I H 35 - (512) 295-8539

They are real close to the HEB in Buda.(thanks Caferacermike)

Heh .. I actually never thought about that place ... I drive by it every day one the way home from work! Will have to check them out ...

(This was also posted on nano-reef ... just wanted to catch the opinions of people here that might not be on the other forum)

Years back, I ran a web site called the Aquarium Fish Magazine Index which provided an index of all the articles in said magazine spanning it's publishing history (1988-2001 at the time). People would use the index to find past articles on particular subjects (like Angelfish or what-not). I even had the publishers of the magazine semi-supporting me by giving me free subscriptions to give away for anniversaries and such.

(Now I think that magazine has been renamed to Aquarium Fish International, but that is besides the point.)

I took down the web site a few years back when I was totally out of the freshwater/saltwater/pond hobbies.

Well I am back into the hobbies again, and am posting to see if all that index information would be useful to anyone these days. If it is, then I have some ideas to bring it back to the world wide webs.

Since the time of the index, web searches and forum's (like this one) have supplanted the need to use written references quite a lot. I personally do not refer to books much any more for information on questions I have for fish (that is why I am on this site!). But maybe there still are peoples out there that do

Thanks for the feedback!

Not eligible for the cheap price either out here in Buda We actually would like to get one for really collecting rain water

Seeing measurable nitrite in an established tank is a concern. But nitrate is OK, in low levels (5 ppm is low ). Nitrate's will build in the tank naturally and are normally removed by doing your regular water changes. You can also remove nitrates via macro algae and refugiums.

The window screening over the egg crate is a good idea!

I suspect they try "escaping" at night to look for food.

Not to dishearten you, as I think snowflakes are at the bottom of the escapee list. When I worked at a pet store, the ribbon eels were the worst! Once he gets settled into the system and finds his cave, he should be content.

I was eventually able to ween my eel off of live foods to frozen krill (would use a wooden skewer to feed the krill to him)...

Other than placing some type of screening over the intake, not sure what else can be done.

If this eel is in your spiffy new open-top tank, you have bigger issues ... eels are notorious at trying to escape. I had a snowflake many many moons ago. I grew him from a scraggly worm-looking eel to a nice 1" diameter. One night he decided to slip out a hole in the back cover and venture across the dining room floor. Found him dried up halfway across the floor the next morning

Good luck!

Tank looks fabo! Always good to see tanks post-troubles

Awesome looking tank!

I got a cheap tripod off of eBay that works pretty well. Though it is a bit light, so I have to be careful with it when my 70-300mm zoom lens is on the camera.

Phew .. avoided a coral war this weekend. While walking by the tank I noticed my Galaxia coral had a sweeper tentacle touching one of my orange ricordias! So I put the Galaxia coral to the back right of the tank where it can grow for quite a long time and not bother anything. In it's place, I moved my CPR tongue coral up to the front left. This I got from SeaCrop and it has continues to heal and grow very nicely.

I added two white porcelain crabs this weekend. They are not too adventurous, as they have both pretty much stayed around the leather coral where I first put them in at.

Been playing around with the new zoom lens some more, and here are a few new pictures (click on any for a larger view). I can not wait for the ARC meeting ... I am in serious need of some close-up shooting tips.

The two new residents.

Finally a good shot of my yellow watchman goby. He likes to sit between those two ricordias.

The two frogspawn.

Best close-up picture I could get of one of the new porcelain crabs.

Green Zoanthids.

Fire and Ice Zoanthids.

Latest full tank shot.

Who can see my pics? For some reason since the move I cannot.

Nope, the links are broken. Great pictures BTW (when I could see them ).

Those are cool looking! I am sure they love all the room to swim around. So do you have plans for other fish to stock? With the length of that tank, I would think a school of something (like those PJ Cardinals) would look nice.

-James

Here is my entry. My gold striped maroon clownfish was my favorite, as it was the first fish I purchased once getting back into the saltwater hobby last year. Here is a picture of him playing peek-a-boo.

Click for large picture.