reefcubed

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I have been keeping, messing with, and experimenting with mangroves for years. I have read information far and wide, and utilized experience of other refers on here as well. I hope this becomes the one stop spot for inspiration and information. I hope that other mangrove aficionados join in with their displays and to honor us with their advice. Some of which I will post here that I thought was very clever. For now, I’ll save spewing out info on them, and just start by posting pics of my use of them in aquariums. I first started using them in my display refugium of my sps dominant 93 gallon cube. Here is the tank at some point in

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I’ll share pics of it more mature as I go along, but I built a custom display refugium and frag tank for the sump, all contained within the footprint:

Mangroves and fuge day 1:
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I'd like to take some cuttings of the local river mangroves & create an outdoor mangrove & saltwater fish pond.
Are you in Australia? I’d check with the wildlife department first. Mangrove Forests, which coincide with seagrass beds, then coral reefs are the most important aspects of carbon control. One acre of mangrove forest handles 4 times the amount of harmful gases of an acre of rain forest. One acre of seagrass is 35-65 times more affective than rainforest, and coral reefs are 25 times more. You can confirm my numbers, I’ve seen a few different. Anyway, conservation is so important. Over the last half decade, we have lost 50% of the world’s mangrove forests, 35% of that coming in the last decade. It is quite serious.
 
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Here is my display. I’ve had this mangrove for about 5 years and believe it’s about 7 years old. I’m starting to think more about pruning it and if supplementing with iron may help growth.

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Thank you Pelican!! I followed your thread closely, I was hoping you would join in. Please invite others as well! Perhaps @brad908 can share along with others.
 
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I’m going to keep posting progression shots, as well as other projects I’ve done using mangroves. I’m also going to keep tagging people as I think of them to share their mangrove pictures, like @rmchoi. This shot shows an experiment I did with adding clams to aid in filtration:

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This is showing how my mangrove refugium and frag tank was ever evolving as a display:
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If you see, I began adding barnacles to the section. I’ve always kept nano creatures in this area, but this began my obsession with the lovable little barnacle blennies. There are at least 5 in this first shot, and a yasha goby. I had 3-4 yasha gobies in my display, but small fish LOVED to travel down into the sump:
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Another nano goby I added, due to complete insanity, was the very cryptic grisseingeri goby. BEAUTIFUL fish. Very difficult and expensive. Getting them to eat was the main and only focus in my life during that period, lol. At one point I had EIGHT down there, at $150 a piece! I really rarely saw them, I assumed they all died until I broke the tank down and found them, most of them, living in the fuge:
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I also kept sexy shrimp in there on the frag rack side:
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Ok wait, LASTLY, I also had a baby cuttlefish in there for a little bit:
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There are other things I kept down there, I switched out inhabitants A LOT. But it was sort of a service. I became pretty good at training finicky/difficult fish to eat. Not because I have any special skills, but because I was obsessed with my tank. So after a while when I wanted to try something new, I would sell fish that were perfectly quarantined, eating, and fat. NOW I WILL DIGRESS AND GET BACK TO MANGROVE DISPLAYS!
 
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I use mangroves in many, many displays. I would put them in grow out setups too. I feel the reason people fail with mangroves is because they don’t have the patience. I don’t have any either haha. The ones in my refugium did great because I could kind of forget about them and let them be. Through my experience, and the experience of others on Reef2Reef, along with research, we can share some great insight. Here are some saltwater mangrove projects I began and never finished:
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Here are some more projects I did. I began using mangroves in almost everything. Now these are freshwater displays, but can easily be recreated with saltwater. And some aren’t even mangroves, but hopefully they can provide some inspiration
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Here is a nano Sulawesi Cardinal Shrimp (freshwater shrimp that are harder than sps to keep, lol) with mangroves:
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Here is a nano cichlid shell dweller tank I made. These two even bred in this tank:
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Love this thread. Hopefully once my mangrove gets real leaves I can share mine. It's a red mangrove, sending out a lot of roots. I think my light might be too much MH 250 watts for 4 hours. I add Iron once a week. My little mad experiment under way. Mangroves are illegal in AZ so it is hard to get my hands on them.

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Love this thread. Hopefully once my mangrove gets real leaves I can share mine. It's a red mangrove, sending out a lot of roots. I think my light might be too much MH 250 watts for 4 hours. I add Iron once a week. My little mad experiment under way. Mangroves are illegal in AZ so it is hard to get my hands on them.

0201201008a_HDR~2.jpg
FANTASTIC! I hope this thread can be of help and inspiration! Especially as others contribute. I’ve seen other people comment on maybe having too much light. These trees grow along the coastlines in scorching sun. You can NEVER have too much light, it’s a tree! The brighter the light will aid began n the tree growing much stumpier and fuller, instead of reaching for the light. The other thing is to have the proper color spectrum. 6500 k for these guys. Can’t wait to follow your progress!
 
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Love this thread. Hopefully once my mangrove gets real leaves I can share mine. It's a red mangrove, sending out a lot of roots. I think my light might be too much MH 250 watts for 4 hours. I add Iron once a week. My little mad experiment under way. Mangroves are illegal in AZ so it is hard to get my hands on them.

0201201008a_HDR~2.jpg
May I suggest one other thing? Your mangrove is dangerously close to being underwater, I would move it up a few inches to really spur some great growth.
 

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H
I also made an enclosure down there for.... an octopus! I never once saw it, just saw the empty shells of hermit crabs I put in there for it lol. Here is the enclosure I built for the escape artist:
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how big did you let that octopus get before you sold it? Where do you get an octopus and cuddle fish that small
 
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