Snorkeling & Collecting Discussion Group

[vetteguy53081]

Went fishing with the 6yo this morning. There was a negative tide due to post-cold front East winds. We saw a lot of stuff we don’t see much of the year. Interestingly, there is slightly less coral, but lots of gorgs. I have never seen gorgs at this spot before.







I believe I will be getting those 3 small pink/purple/tan gorgs this week.

A little treasure chest here.

 

[Ron Reefman]

Went fishing with the 6yo this morning. There was a negative tide due to post-cold front East winds. We saw a lot of stuff we don’t see much of the year. Interestingly, there is slightly less coral, but lots of gorgs. I have never seen gorgs at this spot before.







I believe I will be getting those 3 small pink/purple/tan gorgs this week.

Sometimes after a strong cold front down here in Cape Coral, we find the soft orange sponges , like the ones in your photo, washed up on the beach. The sponge is basically dead or dying. But I've found that if I find one in fair condition and tear it apart, I find small porcelain crabs (filter feeders), small pistol shrimp and very small serpent stars.

 

[littlefishy]

Found a gorg and macro this morning on a nsw run. They were both on wet sand but high and getting dry. I figured the gorg was dead but it had such o nice color I threw it in the bucket. Here in the tank after water/c it sprouted some polyps!
Wish I could go before work tomorrow as there is a front blowing in and I could collect enough goodies to fill a small tank.

 

[Paul B]

That green stuff is codium. collect it all the time here on Long Island.
It lasts a few months in a tank unless, like me, you have urchins who eat it so t floats all over the tank.

 

[tripdad]

Love the glass fish, lol.

 

[Ron Reefman]

Found a gorg and macro this morning on a nsw run. They were both on wet sand but high and getting dry. I figured the gorg was dead but it had such o nice color I threw it in the bucket. Here in the tank after water/c it sprouted some polyps!
Wish I could go before work tomorrow as there is a front blowing in and I could collect enough goodies to fill a small tank.

We used to do beach walks on Sanibel early in the mornings after a front goes thru. If you ever see a soft orange sponge that's still kind of wet. Tear it open carefully and you may find small pistol shrimp, small porcelain crabs (filter feeders) and even very small serpent stars. I walked with a bucket and a battery bubbler to hold my collection. People were always asking me what the heck I was doing, especially if they saw me tearing sponges apart. BTW, sponges are almost always eventually going to die after even just a minute out of the water. So tearing them apart isn't a bad thing.

 

[Ron Reefman]

My wife and I are heading to the Florida Keys for a couple days of snorkeling, collecting and photography (below and above the water). I intend to just collect some snails as both my 40g aio anemone tank and my 17g aio lps &sps tank are pretty well stocked. I still have a coral banded shrimp, a yellow sea cucumber and a serpent star in the anemone tank. No critters in the 17g tank other than a couple of snails.

However, there is always the possibility that I find something unusual to collect. And I wouldn't mind getting a gorgonian or two for the anemone tank.

Current plan is day one at the Horseshoe and day two at Bahia Honda State Park (photo below).

 

[BZOFIQ]

My wife and I are heading to the Florida Keys for a couple days of snorkeling, collecting and photography (below and above the water). I intend to just collect some snails as both my 40g aio anemone tank and my 17g aio lps &sps tank are pretty well stocked. I still have a coral banded shrimp, a yellow sea cucumber and a serpent star in the anemone tank. No critters in the 17g tank other than a couple of snails.

However, there is always the possibility that I find something unusual to collect. And I wouldn't mind getting a gorgonian or two for the anemone tank.

Current plan is day one at the Horseshoe and day two at Bahia Honda State Park (photo below).

Horseshoe is great, different things to see at high vs low tides.

 

[jeep and goose]

Anyone got spots to hit from shore in Key West no boat, I hit the white st pier yesterday and there’s another spot I’ve been hitting, I want barnacle blennies but I don’t want to fight for my life to catch them lol

 

[Ron Reefman]

Anyone got spots to hit from shore in Key West no boat, I hit the white st pier yesterday and there’s another spot I’ve been hitting, I want barnacle blennies but I don’t want to fight for my life to catch them lol

I wish I could help, but I gave up trying to catch fish many years ago. In fact, my 40g anemone & zoa tank as well as my 17g sps & lps tank don't have any fish at all.

 

[Ron Reefman]

We are here in the Keys and plan to go snorkeling if/when the rain stops and the weather clears up a bit. It's going to be windy both today and tomorrow. We should be OK at the Horseshoe today as it's pretty well protected from easterly winds. Wednesday we will try Bahia Honda, but will likely end up at the southwest end of Spanish Harbor Key. More to follow... if we can get in the water today.

 

[Ron Reefman]

Yesterday we went to the Horseshoe after it stopped raining. The sun came out and it was a beautiful sunny day. There were very few people there until mid afternoon and then some more rain moved in. There was a couple of hours late morning when we had the whole place to ourselves. Oh, and at noon it was an extreme high tide (new moon). If you know the Horseshoe, you know the the rock ledge at the bottom of the photo is above the water 98% of the time!



Here you can see ledge that is normally dry to the left, the slope that is always wet just off the ledge (it slopes down at about a 30 degree angle) and then the drop off that goes straight down about 30 to 40 feet.



And the sign near the water's edge.



I did my clean up crew collecting and got several different kinds of snails, 1 emerald crab, 1 small serpent star, 2 very small feather dusters, a few clams and a couple of oysters. Elaine took photos.

For me, the highlight of the day was when I picked up a small rock and turned it over. In a small indentation in the rock was a VERY small octopus! And I mean small. From the tip of it's head to the end of it's tentacles, it was maybe 1/2" long. I couldn't get Elaine's attention and by the time I move close enough to get her, the octopus had escaped my hand. So, no photo proof.

We saw more mantis shrimp than I have ever seen before, ranging from 2" to maybe 5" long. The black & white stripped ones moved super fast and the more sandy colored ones occasionally would freeze and try to blend into the background.



I didn't see but a few rock boring urchins, which is unusual. But I have a few in my tank and didn't want any more anyway. I collected the one emerald crab for my newer sps & lps coral tank. I know the serpent star will disappear into the rocks on the bottom of my tank, but the ones in my anemone tank have been doing just fine as all 3 were still there when I moved all the sps & lps corals out and rearranged the rockscape.

We did see some upside down jellyfish.



These cormorants were standing on big rock tops that were just under water. All around the rocks, it was 3 feet deep. Elaine swam right up to the rock and took close ups and they didn't seem to care in the least!





There were lots of juvenile tropical fish. I love the very small Sargent major fish. These little guys were only about 1 or 2 inches long.



It's now Wednesday morning and again, we are waiting for a morning shower to pass through and we'll figure out where we'll go snorkeling today. It's going to be kind of windy, 12 to 15mph out of the east. So anything ocean side of the Keys will be too rough. The Horseshoe is so well protected, we may end up there again. But it's so big that we barely covered the west side of the shoe yesterday. Maybe today I'll find an acceptable, small gorgonian to collect?

 

[Ron Reefman]

Today we ended up back at the Horseshoe. The water at Bahia Honda was a bit rough and very stirred up with almost zero visibility. So, we headed off to do the outside of the right arm of the old quarry. It's not spectacular to anybody except those who want to collect critters.

On the way out, I was snorkeling around the inside of the 90 degree corner where the arm goes out. I was in about 6 feet of water when a 3' wide sting ray swam from the shallow side to my right and directly under me! That was cool and I'd only been in the water for a couple of minutes. We crossed over the arm of the quarry as it was under about a foot of water.

On the outside there are lots and lots of loose rocks. Some are very small and a few are basketball size. It's under the rocks that you get to find the stuff I want. I got a few more snails (I probably have a few too many), a small decorator crab, lots of ceriths, a few small hermits and one, intact, spaghetti worm. As it pulled in it's long string like tentacles, I saw that it's home, a parchment tube, was just laying on the sand. Normally they are attached to the under side of a rock and you'll break them if you try to remove them. I waited until all the tentacles were in and then I picked it up and put it in my collection jar. We'll see if it survives the trip home.

I've been doing this long enough that 99% or more, of the critters I collect, survive. Part of that is because I have learned that there are some critters that are just too tender or temperamental to survive the trip (5 hours in a tank with a bubbler) or they only survive a short time in my tank.

As we were snorkeling back to our starting point, I got to follow a young barracuda that was about 18" long. It kept doing a half turn to look back at me and then would go back to the same course I was on. I followed it about 50 yards before it turned out for deeper water.

I love snorkeling. It's kind of like getting to view an alien world where almost nothing is similar to my life on dry land. So many unusual critters, and strange plants, and weird stuff like the huge variety of sponges in almost every color you can imagine. And lucky me, my wife likes to snorkel as much as I do... maybe even a bit more; and she photographs the whole thing!

Photos to follow... probably Friday as we'll be driving home and I'll be moving critters to a holding tank before I decide who goes in which tank.

 

[Ron Reefman]

So, this morning I was cleaning out my holding tank and found 2 unusual critters in the tank. They must have hitchhiked in on some of the algae I collected.

I know this is a small mantis shrimp and he will go in my anemone tank. The only invert at risk that I'd like NOT to lose is my coral banded shrimp. This guy is about 2.5" long.



I believe this is a nudibranch. I think it's a carnivore and eats coral polys and anemones. I wish I could put it in my anemone tank. I don't think it would be a problem for the big BTAs or the big RFAs. I don't care if it goes after all the green zoas in the tank. But I have a few small BTAs & RFAs that would probably be tasty bits for this guy. So it may not make the cut.

 

[PolypPocket]

Following along! So fascinating

 

[Ron Reefman]

Following along! So fascinating

This thread is getting pretty old. And we only go to the Keys a couple of times a year now. Once in May (before the thunderstorm season starts) and once in October (as the hurricane season winds down). I'm pretty sure we will be going there this October, however we have a week of hiking the Appellation Trail up in Pennsylvania during the peak Fall color season. My wife and I are both avid photographers. She likes wildlife (mostly birds). I like wildlife, sports car, F1 and IndyCar racing as well as the sun & moon both when they rise and when they set.

I used to collect a lot of stuff because at one point I had about 700g of saltwater in the house (4 tanks and 2 shared sumps). Now I'm down to a 40g breeder aio with mostly BTA and RFA along with some zoas. The other tank is a new (built by me) 20g aio that is almost all sps and lps. Neither tank has any fish (it makes keeping the tanks clean so much easier). Both tanks get all their CUC from our snorkel trips to the Keys. I do occasionally bring home something out of the ordinary. Last May I collected a small mantis shrimp and some calcareous algae which is doing quite well in the 40g breeder. I have to cut it back every 3 or 4 weeks to keep it in check.

This is my favorite moon set photo. After 2 years of trying, I finally got the full moon going down behind the Sanibel Lighthouse. Getting a clear horizon as the moon goes down is very rare here in SW Florida! This has been cleaned up a bit with Photoshop, but it's 99% my image. I was almost 4 miles away from the lighthouse and used about an 800mm with my zoom lens.