The Other Way to Run a Reef Tank (no Quarantine)

[Denisk]

@Paul B I have read a lot of these pages over the years and have always been a believer in proper nutrition, established rock, and picking fish that do well with each other. I also just enjoyed the different approaches people have always had over their tanks.

Again I do apologize if this was discussed on some page at some point but what are your thoughts if a fish did break out in velvet and or Brooklynella in a tank?

Would you just remove the fish if it died and carry on?

Would you wait to try and add another fish?

Too me ich was never such a concern but certain diseases are far harder to beat.

 

[Dave1993]

@Paul B I have read a lot of these pages over the years and have always been a believer in proper nutrition, established rock, and picking fish that do well with each other. I also just enjoyed the different approaches people have always had over their tanks.

Again I do apologize if this was discussed on some page at some point but what are your thoughts if a fish did break out in velvet and or Brooklynella in a tank?

Would you just remove the fish if it died and carry on?

Would you wait to try and add another fish?

Too me ich was never such a concern but certain diseases are far harder to beat.

That's a good question

 

[Paul B]

Denisk, in an immune tank that would never happen but if it did say on a new fish, the infection may not be as bad as in a quarantined tank but if it was, if I could catch that fish I would remove it and try to cure it with the methods used today but I would also add a diatom filter to it's tank to remove the parasites that were not on the fish.

Nothing would happen to the other fish in the tank as immune fish can't be infected if they are kept properly.

Of course if the other fish get sick, the tank was not kept properly so the fish were not truely immune.

I was just interviewed on Rappin with ReefBum on You Tube and I talk about that.

 

[Dave1993]

my fish seem to be immune to ich now but idk how they would fare with velvet and i have a powder tang which people say absolutely cannot live with ich i have stopped buying more fish just incase i add them and they can't deal with the ich

 

[Denisk]

Denisk, in an immune tank that would never happen but if it did say on a new fish, the infection may not be as bad as in a quarantined tank but if it was, if I could catch that fish I would remove it and try to cure it with the methods used today but I would also add a diatom filter to it's tank to remove the parasites that were not on the fish.

Nothing would happen to the other fish in the tank as immune fish can't be infected if they are kept properly.

Of course if the other fish get sick, the tank was not kept properly so the fish were not truely immune.

I was just interviewed on Rappin with ReefBum on You Tube and I talk about that.

Very interesting, Thank you for the response!

 

[Paul B]

i have a powder tang which people say absolutely cannot live with ich i have stopped buying more fish just in case i add them and they can't deal with the ich

People say a lot of things in general and in this hobby. Immune fish are immune from just about everything depending on how you get them immune.

Remember immunity comes about because at some point in the fishes life it was exposed to those pathogens just like if we go to Mexico we will probably get disintary (I can't spell that and spell check can't either )

The Mexican people don't often get it because they are eating that stuff every day but I get it every time I go there.

The Vietnamese people were not dying of malaria by the droves but if I didn't take an anti malaria pill every day, I probably would have gotten it because the mosquitoes there are as big as giraffes.

I am not talking about the people living in filthy conditions in the jungle eating rats. I am talking about the people eating an otherwise normal diet.

Everything will succumb to something eating garbage but we shouldn't be feeding our fish garbage.

Remember the "proper" diet is not just seafood. It is seafood which contains living gut bacteria. Not necessarily what we buy at an LFS. That is good food but I feel it needs to be supplemented occasionally with something else. Something like live worms or fresh or freshly frozen shellfish for the gut bacteria which controls 100% of the immunity.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

@Paul B I have read a lot of these pages over the years and have always been a believer in proper nutrition, established rock, and picking fish that do well with each other. I also just enjoyed the different approaches people have always had over their tanks.

Again I do apologize if this was discussed on some page at some point but what are your thoughts if a fish did break out in velvet and or Brooklynella in a tank?

Would you just remove the fish if it died and carry on?

Would you wait to try and add another fish?

Too me ich was never such a concern but certain diseases are far harder to beat.

I’m a big proponent of what @Paul B describes, and use the same approach on client tanks. I’ve also been taking a beating in another thread for advocating for (but not advising others to use) this approach. Oh well.

To answer your question…

It is very rare to see evidence of parasites in any of the tanks I do, even on new fish (and unlike Paul, I actually do just dump the fish straight from the wholesaler bag straight into the tank ). I can’t remember the last time I saw Brooklynella.

Almost without exception, when I have seen more than just a spot here, spot there, it’s the result of tang on ______ (fill in the blank) violence, and typically both fish will show an infestation. If I can remove the recipient of the aggression, I do…because there is only one outcome.

Having said that, most of the tanks I do are large, with a lot of rock structure, corals, etc, so it can be really difficult to remove a fish. There have been a number of times where an infected fish got back into the rocks, never to be seen again.

I can’t think of a time when it resulted in an outbreak in the tank. The fish becomes part of the reef, and the parasites quickly run out of available hosts.

 

[Paul B]

In the 3 years since I started this thread I have attended a few conferences put on by neurologists. My wife has MS so we get invited to these things all the time. The last one was about stress and how it lowers our immunity and gives us all sorts of other afflictions including what I consider the most interesting, shortens our (and I assume fish) lifespans.

How does stress do this? It is actually simple. Our bodies make Cortisol. We exude it from our adrenal gland constantly and it gives us energy for various tasks. Our bodies use it as the day goes by.

If we for instance are being chased by a rhinoceros, Model T Ford or Henry Winkler, our Adrenalin gland would pump out a lot of cortisol to give us energy.

Cortisol dissolves some of the calcium in our bones for our energy. and turns some muscle into sugar for energy.

These are good things especially when we were always in danger of being eaten by something.
But cortisol has some big problems to. When our bodies produce it but can't use it it also brings out dormant diseases, lowers our immunity, lowers our sex drive and a whole lot of other things. But the worst thing it does is shorten our life span.

The way it does that is because there is this thing on the ends of every chromosome in every cell of our bodies. This thing is called a telemere. As we grow and age our chromosomes need to divide and different creatures do this at different time spans.

The telemere at the end of each chromosome is like the "aglet" on the end of our shoelace and it keeps that chromosome from unraveling so it protects it. But every time the chromosome divides the telemere gets shorter until there is no more of it left and the chromosome degrades and can no longer divide. That is the end of our lifespan and in Humans happens at about age 80 or so.

That is why everything has a lifespan and can't live forever.

Cortisol is called the stress hormone because stress causes us to make more cortisol and if we are not physically running for our life, our muscles can't use that cortisol so it builds up.
The main problem with this is that it shortens those telemeres shortening our and I assume a fishes lifespan.

Fish experience stress in a tank but really experience it in a tank not set up like the ocean such as a bare quarantine tank with PVC elbows from Home Depot and fish not getting the food they recognize.

So (and I am speculating here as I am an electrician and not a fish physiologist) if a fish has a normal lifespan of 10 years and we get that fish 2 years old. 72 days in quarantine with copper will make that fish create a lot of cortisol which will shorten it's lifespan. How much? No one knows because all fish are different and fish are built much differently than most of us.

But I think that is the main reason that I have not been able to find even one fully quarantined tank or fish that is very old. But of course I am guessing.

If all of our fish are not mainly dying of only old age, we are failing and doing something wrong.
Just my opinion of course.

 

[blaxsun]

I'm in the "no quarantine" camp as I personally found that, well - it's only effective if you're 100% diligent - which almost never happens. I'm coming up on just over a year and a half of not quarantining any of my fish (July 2021). I try to select the healthiest and most active fish from my LFS, provide a freshwater dip for flukes and acclimate them properly.

I've gone from roughly 16 fish post-velvet (where quarantine didn't work) to a current stock of 50 today. All healthy and disease free. I haven't had a chance to read through the entire 142 pages (working on it!), but I do run a UV to keep things in-check along with an ozone system. And I don't do water changes.

 

[C4ctus99]

In the 3 years since I started this thread I have attended a few conferences put on by neurologists. My wife has MS so we get invited to these things all the time. The last one was about stress and how it lowers our immunity and gives us all sorts of other afflictions including what I consider the most interesting, shortens our (and I assume fish) lifespans.

How does stress do this? It is actually simple. Our bodies make Cortisol. We exude it from our adrenal gland constantly and it gives us energy for various tasks. Our bodies use it as the day goes by.

If we for instance are being chased by a rhinoceros, Model T Ford or Henry Winkler, our Adrenalin gland would pump out a lot of cortisol to give us energy.

Cortisol dissolves some of the calcium in our bones for our energy. and turns some muscle into sugar for energy.

These are good things especially when we were always in danger of being eaten by something.
But cortisol has some big problems to. When our bodies produce it but can't use it it also brings out dormant diseases, lowers our immunity, lowers our sex drive and a whole lot of other things. But the worst thing it does is shorten our life span.

The way it does that is because there is this thing on the ends of every chromosome in every cell of our bodies. This thing is called a telemere. As we grow and age our chromosomes need to divide and different creatures do this at different time spans.

The telemere at the end of each chromosome is like the "aglet" on the end of our shoelace and it keeps that chromosome from unraveling so it protects it. But every time the chromosome divides the telemere gets shorter until there is no more of it left and the chromosome degrades and can no longer divide. That is the end of our lifespan and in Humans happens at about age 80 or so.

That is why everything has a lifespan and can't live forever.

Cortisol is called the stress hormone because stress causes us to make more cortisol and if we are not physically running for our life, our muscles can't use that cortisol so it builds up.
The main problem with this is that it shortens those telemeres shortening our and I assume a fishes lifespan.

Fish experience stress in a tank but really experience it in a tank not set up like the ocean such as a bare quarantine tank with PVC elbows from Home Depot and fish not getting the food they recognize.

So (and I am speculating here as I am an electrician and not a fish physiologist) if a fish has a normal lifespan of 10 years and we get that fish 2 years old. 72 days in quarantine with copper will make that fish create a lot of cortisol which will shorten it's lifespan. How much? No one knows because all fish are different and fish are built much differently than most of us.

But I think that is the main reason that I have not been able to find even one fully quarantined tank or fish that is very old. But of course I am guessing.

If all of our fish are not mainly dying of only old age, we are failing and doing something wrong.
Just my opinion of course.

this is really interesting, I did not know this about cortisol but it’s neat. I’m newer to the hobby and have yet to quarantine any of my fish and it sounds like a fair amount of extra work. After reading a fair amount on this thread and seeing a lot of other stuff, I’m going to keep doing what I’ve been doing. I definitely want to get more liverock now and have been needing to up my food game for a while now. It helps that I live on the Florida coast and my dad fishes regularly.

a couple questions:

Do you think oysters would make good gut food? They are plentiful here in Jax but we’ve always considered them to be nasty and cuts from them seem to get infected easily….

how do you transport sea water? Just buckets? Something else?

Also an electrician actually, just a much much younger one, only 6 years in the trade but have my county license, looking to get a masters this summer, and finishing up the apprenticeship in a year for my union license

 

[Paul B]

C4ctus99. Good morning. Nice to meet you as a fellow electrician.

To collect water I back my Jeep up to a beach and either pump it in with a bilge pump connected to a long hose that I throw into the sea or I wade in with buckets and dump it into a vat in my car.

Here I normally have to filter it because it is not Florida and it is full of sand, seaweed and chopped up other things that makes it cloudy.

Oysters are one of the best foods and I eat them myself.

I worked my time in Manhattan basically doing new construction on commercial and industrial jobs. We never worked in houses. Much of the skyline of the City I either worked on the construction or renovation. I worked 2 years on the Empire State Building where I installed the fire alarm system. That building has an air shaft (it was built before air conditioning) that goes up 86 floors.

I ran the conduits in there on a bolsons chair. I also spent 2 years re building the service rooms in the Chrysler Building. One of my favorite buildings.

In the early 70s I installed the lightning rods on the top of the World Trade Center and worked on many of the floors.
But my favorite job by far is being retired.

 

[JasPR]

The other way to run a reef tank (No Quarantine)


I was asked by my friend Humblefish to start a thread on my practices of running a tank with no quarantine, hospital tanks, medications, dipping or almost anything else.

It is "not" just to take a fish from a store and drop it in your reef because that fish will probably die. You may not see many spots on fish in a store because just about all stores use medications in their tanks to suppress the parasites. They have to because they get new fish all the time from all over the world and they can't change all the water and sterilize their tanks in between shipments. But all fish are infected in a store and even in the sea. They swim in a soup of parasites, viruses and bacteria, some good, some not so good.

In the sea those pathogens are kept in check by each other as viruses prey on parasites and bacteria and other forces such as things exuded from corals and tend to keep everything in check. Of course they all prey on fish.

But fish have been around almost as long as those things and they evolved long ago to live in harmony with all of them. Fish eat parasites with every meal and those parasites are processed in the fishes kidney among other places and that causes the fish to exude antiparisitic and antibacterial properties in their slime. They constantly do this and it keeps parasites and bacteria from killing the fish even though some parasites will get through to sample some fish flesh.


Anyway, that is the basis for my method that I slowly learned starting in about 1973 when I had to keep fish in copper continuously as we all did. (20 pennies to the gallon) Our tanks were not reefs, we fed flakes, changed the water to much and took out the rocks and dead corals to bleach them whenever they turned green which was almost weekly. The fish were always stressed and it was hard to keep even damsels.

Then I started feeding things other than flakes, things like frozen clams, pieces of fish and live blackworms. In 7 weeks my blue devils spawned and kept spawning for 7 years. Spawning damsels is no great Whop but in those days few people could keep them alive for a few weeks.

I gradually learned that bacteria and parasites would not kill my fish as long as I didn't medicate them. It was backward thinking but remember there was no internet and I didn't even know anyone with a salt tank so I was on my own.

When I added a fish it normally would get spots and sometimes die, but most of the time the spots receded and the fish was fine and didn't get sick when I added a new fish.

That was how I learned my method which is not really a method but a lack of a method.

With my method you can not quarantine because that short circuits the process. I actually want parasites and bacteria as that is what the fish was swimming with in the sea a week before.

I just put the fish in my tank and normally the fish starts eating right away and is fine. About half the time the fish will show a few spots but they are very few and disappear in a day or two. Yes they finished their life cycle on that fish and dropped off to infect something else, but they can't because those fish are constantly exposed to parasites so they are immune.

The things I do “not” do is quarantine.

I do not ever feed dry foods such as flakes or pellets as those foods are sterile.

I do not suck every bit of detritus out of my tank


I do however always feed something with live bacteria in it such as frozen foods.

I feed whole foods with guts such as clams, mysis, mussels and I use LRS foods which is a commercial food which I consider the best. But I still want to give the fish something that I know has living bacteria in it. I try to feed a few times a week some live worms but sometimes I can’t. Where I live now I can’t get them but I do raise live whiteworms which live in dirt. I bought a few of them years ago and that batch is still living and reproducing. I like the worms because of the living bacteria in their guts and the dirt they are living in. Some people that have immune tanks never use live worms so they may not be necessary, but I use them when I can. These things need not be fed every day, but at least occasionally. But all foods should have bacteria in it and if you feed nothing but commercial food, I am not sure how much living bacteria is in that because you don’t know how old it is or what temperature it was stored at.



If you have access to a salt water beach, collect a little mud and sprinkle it around the tank. That is for bacterial diversity. If you can’t get that, you can use garden soil with no pesticides or fertilizer.

(I did not invent that, it was “Robert Straughn” The Father of salt water fish keeping.)

The idea is that I want parasites living in the tank along with the fish. They will keep reproducing and trying to infect fish but they will fail.

I know the argument that there is much more water in the sea than in a tank and the parasites are more numerous. But that is of no consequence because the fishes immune system will get as strong as it needs to be to repel parasites and the more parasites there are, the stronger the immune system.


If you quarantine fish, there will be nothing for the fish to become immune to and any slight infection will crash the tank. Fish are not delicate creatures that need coddling and they almost never get sick. They have a fantastic immune system as long as we don’t try to short circuit it.

I can’t remember the last time I lost a fish to disease but it was probably in the 80s. Virtually all of my fish only die of old age or jumping out. I do lose fish due to my stupidity like if I buy something that I can’t properly feed like shrimpfish, twin spot gobies, orange spotted filefish etc. My tank is not set up for those fish and I should not buy them. But everything else, with no exception live long enough for me to get tired of them and I give them away or they die of old age.

I do not like clownfish but one day about 27 years ago I bought a baby of what I thought was a red hawkfish. It turned out to be a Fireclown and I still have it. She also spawns a few times a week as all my paired fish do as all healthy fish carry eggs all the time.


If you have a tank full of quarantined fish, I am not sure how you could get those fish immune because that quarantining may have destroyed the immune system of those fish. It would be a long process because the fish would have to be infected, and then cured for them to become immune and you may lose some fish.


It would be much easier to start an immune tank from the start. Remember, if you see some parasites, think of that as a good thing and not something that you need to dip or treat. Yes, you may lost some fish in the beginning but your fish will become immune to just about everything and you will never need medications or disease forums. Many fish die in quarantine or right after so that is also not a panacea.
I did not mention parameters because IMO they are not that important for fish health. Corals, yes, but not fish. My nitrates were 160 for years and I never had a fish die and they continued to spawn.
This is my method which has worked well for decades and I never lose fish to disease which is something I think we all strive for.

VERY WELL WRITTEN! And very valid. It really is a refreshing of what most of us knew all along-- the G.A.S. response that every organism goes through is especially strong with fish as they can't escape ( fight or flight) from less than ideal water conditions. Or it can simply be that reef species are evolved to live a certain life style which can't be duplicated in captivity. This is one reason I swore off of tangs, for instance, many years ago now. In this conversation some people become emotional and defensive-- arguing that there is no predation in captivity so many species actually live longer than they would have on the reef. True, but then again for every 100 tangs captured, maybe 80 get to the local distribution points. And of those 80, maybe 8 will find their way to ideal conditions in captivity- large LONG pristine aquariums of 6 ft or greater. The remaining 72 will be held in hell wholes of 55-90 gallons ( four feet or less) and survive one session of G.A.S. after another until they finally die. G.A.S. stands for General Adaptation Syndrome. 'Flight or flight' is what most people know this as. If the fish can't fight or flee, it must stand its ground and shut down systems and metabolic activities until the threat passes-- there in lies the possibility of immediate death or an physiological insult that is stored -- and accumulates-- shortening the life of the suffering creature over time.

 

[JasPR]

The other way to run a reef tank (No Quarantine)


I was asked by my friend Humblefish to start a thread on my practices of running a tank with no quarantine, hospital tanks, medications, dipping or almost anything else.

It is "not" just to take a fish from a store and drop it in your reef because that fish will probably die. You may not see many spots on fish in a store because just about all stores use medications in their tanks to suppress the parasites. They have to because they get new fish all the time from all over the world and they can't change all the water and sterilize their tanks in between shipments. But all fish are infected in a store and even in the sea. They swim in a soup of parasites, viruses and bacteria, some good, some not so good.

In the sea those pathogens are kept in check by each other as viruses prey on parasites and bacteria and other forces such as things exuded from corals and tend to keep everything in check. Of course they all prey on fish.

But fish have been around almost as long as those things and they evolved long ago to live in harmony with all of them. Fish eat parasites with every meal and those parasites are processed in the fishes kidney among other places and that causes the fish to exude antiparisitic and antibacterial properties in their slime. They constantly do this and it keeps parasites and bacteria from killing the fish even though some parasites will get through to sample some fish flesh.


Anyway, that is the basis for my method that I slowly learned starting in about 1973 when I had to keep fish in copper continuously as we all did. (20 pennies to the gallon) Our tanks were not reefs, we fed flakes, changed the water to much and took out the rocks and dead corals to bleach them whenever they turned green which was almost weekly. The fish were always stressed and it was hard to keep even damsels.

Then I started feeding things other than flakes, things like frozen clams, pieces of fish and live blackworms. In 7 weeks my blue devils spawned and kept spawning for 7 years. Spawning damsels is no great Whop but in those days few people could keep them alive for a few weeks.

I gradually learned that bacteria and parasites would not kill my fish as long as I didn't medicate them. It was backward thinking but remember there was no internet and I didn't even know anyone with a salt tank so I was on my own.

When I added a fish it normally would get spots and sometimes die, but most of the time the spots receded and the fish was fine and didn't get sick when I added a new fish.

That was how I learned my method which is not really a method but a lack of a method.

With my method you can not quarantine because that short circuits the process. I actually want parasites and bacteria as that is what the fish was swimming with in the sea a week before.

I just put the fish in my tank and normally the fish starts eating right away and is fine. About half the time the fish will show a few spots but they are very few and disappear in a day or two. Yes they finished their life cycle on that fish and dropped off to infect something else, but they can't because those fish are constantly exposed to parasites so they are immune.

The things I do “not” do is quarantine.

I do not ever feed dry foods such as flakes or pellets as those foods are sterile.

I do not suck every bit of detritus out of my tank


I do however always feed something with live bacteria in it such as frozen foods.

I feed whole foods with guts such as clams, mysis, mussels and I use LRS foods which is a commercial food which I consider the best. But I still want to give the fish something that I know has living bacteria in it. I try to feed a few times a week some live worms but sometimes I can’t. Where I live now I can’t get them but I do raise live whiteworms which live in dirt. I bought a few of them years ago and that batch is still living and reproducing. I like the worms because of the living bacteria in their guts and the dirt they are living in. Some people that have immune tanks never use live worms so they may not be necessary, but I use them when I can. These things need not be fed every day, but at least occasionally. But all foods should have bacteria in it and if you feed nothing but commercial food, I am not sure how much living bacteria is in that because you don’t know how old it is or what temperature it was stored at.



If you have access to a salt water beach, collect a little mud and sprinkle it around the tank. That is for bacterial diversity. If you can’t get that, you can use garden soil with no pesticides or fertilizer.

(I did not invent that, it was “Robert Straughn” The Father of salt water fish keeping.)

The idea is that I want parasites living in the tank along with the fish. They will keep reproducing and trying to infect fish but they will fail.

I know the argument that there is much more water in the sea than in a tank and the parasites are more numerous. But that is of no consequence because the fishes immune system will get as strong as it needs to be to repel parasites and the more parasites there are, the stronger the immune system.


If you quarantine fish, there will be nothing for the fish to become immune to and any slight infection will crash the tank. Fish are not delicate creatures that need coddling and they almost never get sick. They have a fantastic immune system as long as we don’t try to short circuit it.

I can’t remember the last time I lost a fish to disease but it was probably in the 80s. Virtually all of my fish only die of old age or jumping out. I do lose fish due to my stupidity like if I buy something that I can’t properly feed like shrimpfish, twin spot gobies, orange spotted filefish etc. My tank is not set up for those fish and I should not buy them. But everything else, with no exception live long enough for me to get tired of them and I give them away or they die of old age.

I do not like clownfish but one day about 27 years ago I bought a baby of what I thought was a red hawkfish. It turned out to be a Fireclown and I still have it. She also spawns a few times a week as all my paired fish do as all healthy fish carry eggs all the time.


If you have a tank full of quarantined fish, I am not sure how you could get those fish immune because that quarantining may have destroyed the immune system of those fish. It would be a long process because the fish would have to be infected, and then cured for them to become immune and you may lose some fish.


It would be much easier to start an immune tank from the start. Remember, if you see some parasites, think of that as a good thing and not something that you need to dip or treat. Yes, you may lost some fish in the beginning but your fish will become immune to just about everything and you will never need medications or disease forums. Many fish die in quarantine or right after so that is also not a panacea.
I did not mention parameters because IMO they are not that important for fish health. Corals, yes, but not fish. My nitrates were 160 for years and I never had a fish die and they continued to spawn.
This is my method which has worked well for decades and I never lose fish to disease which is something I think we all strive for.

 

[C4ctus99]

C4ctus99. Good morning. Nice to meet you as a fellow electrician.

To collect water I back my Jeep up to a beach and either pump it in with a bilge pump connected to a long hose that I throw into the sea or I wade in with buckets and dump it into a vat in my car.

Here I normally have to filter it because it is not Florida and it is full of sand, seaweed and chopped up other things that makes it cloudy.

Oysters are one of the best foods and I eat them myself.

I worked my time in Manhattan basically doing new construction on commercial and industrial jobs. We never worked in houses. Much of the skyline of the City I either worked on the construction or renovation. I worked 2 years on the Empire State Building where I installed the fire alarm system. That building has an air shaft (it was built before air conditioning) that goes up 86 floors.

I ran the conduits in there on a bolsons chair. I also spent 2 years re building the service rooms in the Chrysler Building. One of my favorite buildings.

In the early 70s I installed the lightning rods on the top of the World Trade Center and worked on many of the floors.
But my favorite job by far is being retired.

That’s awesome! I’ve worked in healthcare construction for my professional career but do a little commercial and residential on the side. Learned a lot in 6 years by asking way too many questions. Glad you are enjoying retirement

it’s cool that you can say you worked in all those places, Jacksonville has zero landmark buildings basically, but I still love it here. I’ll post a picture of where I’m currently at below.

I can’t eat oysters as I am allergic to shellfish, but can definitely harvest both those and baitfish in whatever quantities I need here. I’ll need to go back to the beginning of this thread and find those threads with recipes that were linked. May also look into using dead oyster clumps as decoration/live rock substitutes but may be way too stinky

the water here sure ain’t no crystal clear water from the keys or gulf coast but it’s not too bad. I’m also thinking of trying to collect my own liverock cause that stuff gets expensive fast. Only ocean rock here tho is mostly coquina which may have some state regulations on it

also, sorry to hear about your wife having MS, a friend of mine got it and it definitely affected his life in big ways

the hospital building I’m currently on:

 

[littlefishy]

If you are in Jacksonville Fl, be advised collecting live rock is illegal. Only exception would be old seashells that may have life on them.

 

[C4ctus99]

If you are in Jacksonville Fl, be advised collecting live rock is illegal. Only exception would be old seashells that may have life on them.

Live between there and st Augustine and definitely wasn’t planning to try picking it up at Jax beach

may try oysters tho, we’ll see

 

[Paul B]

I have a very good friend of mine who moved to jacksonville. He was in Nam the year before me. You may see him there.

(Wow, I lost almost 30 lbs since that picture was taken. )

 

[C4ctus99]

I have a very good friend of mine who moved to jacksonville. He was in Nam the year before me. You may see him there.

(Wow, I lost almost 30 lbs since that picture was taken. )

It’s a big little town so who knows, I meet friends of friends all the time. I’ll keep an eye out for him…

 

[littlefishy]

Mister Paul B, I'd like to see your continued participation on r2r (and that nano site if you ever go back) for the next decade or 2.
Would you consider breaking apart your system and installing it in several easily managed nano tanks, or just 1, so we can watch you keep going? For example, this latest sponge problem wouldn't be as huge of a deal in a small tank.

 

[Paul B]

Littlefishy, you had me at mister.

Actually if you go to page 412 of my "Build" thread https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/tank-birthday-47-years.55423/page-412

You will see that I already took all the rocks, corals and fish out of my tank, removed the sponge and put it all back.