Walking around the reef at low tide

[MaccaPopEye]

So awesome. Some of the ones above you are unsure on, I believe, are colonial tunicates.
I selfishly hope you get the night off for the last low tide.

I have no idea what the next two are and I have only seen them the once so I haven’t been able to get a better photo.
This one is a colonial ascidian.

I think it is either Botryllus or Botrylloides.
Very interesting contributions, thank you very much for sharing!

Thanks guys they all look very similar, so it is somewhere in that ballpark. I'll definitely keep an eye out for them next time and see if I can get a better pic

 

[timrocks311]

so cool! I could look at photos like these all day. Thanks for sharing!

 

[randy4083]

This is really nice and cool thanks for sharing by the way where are these pictures taken at and you should keep posting because it's really nice looking at everything

 

[Cary]

Very envious. Some of those last fish look like they may be some type of scorpionfish or stonefish...The Texas coast has several varieties as well. They do sting and may be toxic. Lionfish cousins.

 

[MaccaPopEye]

by the way where are these pictures taken

I live in the Northern Territory, Australia.

Very envious. Some of those last fish look like they may be some type of scorpionfish or stonefish...The Texas coast has several varieties as well. They do sting and may be toxic. Lionfish cousins.

I've actually been thinking that the first of the camouflaged fish is probably a stone fish.

Stone fish are actually very common here and when I go out I try to keep a vigilant eye out for them (as well as blue ringed octopus and crocodiles) but I have yet to see one, and hopefully that isn't just because I have missed them as they are (at least the local ones are) extremely toxic and the spines are like hypodermic needles. I always wear thick soled boots just in case I step on one but I don't want to test them out !

This one certainly has a similar body shape but the ones I grew up being told to watch out for look fairly different (the pic below is an example of the local stone fish species I am familiar with from google). But this one was very small so maybe it was a juvenile of the same species, or maybe we have a few different species of them up here.

 

[A Toadstool Leather]

Why is it that some of the corals have vibrant colors and others are plain brown? Always found that odd

 

[revhtree]

Very cool!

 

[jsker]

Thank you for sharing all of this with us.

 

[MaccaPopEye]

Why is it that some of the corals have vibrant colors and others are plain brown? Always found that odd

How two of the same kind of coral right next to each other that obviously get the same light and water conditions can be so different I don't know. Maybe some coral is just brown no matter what.

But I do know that with good water quality and light at least some of the brown coral out there wouod eventually get some colours. This is a small brown moon coral from this same area after it had been in my old tank for 6 months.

 

[JayBee26]

absolutely like dying and going to heaven

 

[DJ Monty]

Awesome, thanks for sharing..

 

[chowwil]

Thanks for sharing

 

[A Toadstool Leather]

How two of the same kind of coral right next to each other that obviously get the same light and water conditions can be so different I don't know. Maybe some coral is just brown no matter what.

But I do know that with good water quality and light at least some of the brown coral out there wouod eventually get some colours. This is a small brown moon coral from this same area after it had been in my old tank for 6 months.

Now I wish we has moon corals in the hobby. They are really unique compared to other lps. Do they have feeding and sweeper tentacles?

 

[MaccaPopEye]

Well I managed to get down to the reef tonight at what is probably the last worthwhile night time low tide of the year. The plan this time was to get down there really early and walk out with the tide to spend a bit more time out there. Lucky we did go early as the tide didn’t get as low as it was predicted to and turned half an hour before it was supposed to (and the tide comes in fairly quickly).

We still managed to spend just under 2 hours out there which is usual and saw some different things as always.

After the last trip my UV torch bit the dust but luckily my mate bought one too so we still had one out there.

Same as before if I don’t label a pic and you know what it is (or if I labelled one wrong) then let me know

This is just a pic of one of the rock pools with the UV torch shining on it (It's really quite hard to get the camera to focus with the UV torch on so the only pics that also have the UV torch shining on them are 2 of the rock flower anemone pics and 1 of the acro pics, the rest are just done with the camera flash).

I’ve never seen these large feather duster worms in person before but we saw a few tonight.

This one was interesting. We think it looks like a small scoly but I thought we didn’t get them around here. Whatever it is we saw a lot of them out there tonight, all single polyps but they were all fairly small.

There was so many rock flower anemones tonight. They were everywhere. Quite plain and easy to miss if you are just looking around but under UV they all light up brighter than anything else. (first and last are with just the camera flash).

I don’t see too many carpet anemones down there but most have the same colours as this one.

And a cool close up of the carpet anemone.

A green tongue coral.

The majority of the coral was green or brown as usual but tonight we saw quite a few more blue corals than before.

Some nice green pieces.

These look quite brown in the photos, but when they are sitting among actual brown coral it's much easier to see the red come out in them.

A few duncans.

These I have never seen before, a blue zoa or palythoa and under UV light the tentacles glowed red

There were a lot of green zoas scattered around tonight.

I think this is the same kind of acro we found last time. Here is a pic of it with just torch light and one with the UV light as well.

Green cup coral.

 

[MaccaPopEye]

I thought this was pretty cool, the first time I have ever seen a wobbegong shark. Unfortunately it was in a tricky spot and didn’t want to get seen so it was stirring up the mud and moving around a lot which made getting a picture difficult. It was quite big though.

Another first was this awesome coral cat shark. Fairly small and stuck in a small pool so it posed nicely for a photo.

Another scribbled angel, got some slightly better pics of this one.

Some different puffer fish

I’ve posted pics of this kind of fish before but I took another pic tonight as the UV light was making all of its spines glow! Unfortunately I couldn’t get it to come out in the photo.

Here are the two of the different kinds of butterfly fish you can find down there. The one on the right is a Mulleri butterfly (blackfin coral fish) and the one on the left is a Marginalis butterfly (Margined coral fish). I have heard of some people possibly seeing copper bands too but I haven’t been able to find any.

Another pic of those red crabs. These are so bright and large they really look awesome.

I just took this pic of a blue swimmer crab because it was being still and it let me (no UV, just the camera flash). I didn’t realise how awesome it came out until I got home

And that's all for now folks. I'm sure I will take a couple of days off work at the end of the year when the day time low tides roll around. There is another spot I want to go and check out so I will update this thread then if I see anything interesting!

Cheers,

Macca

 

[Tahoe61]

Thank you Macca, I really enjoy the images.

 

[CNDReef]

Those are amazing shots
Glad you shared them
Thank you

 

[MaccaPopEye]

Now I wish we has moon corals in the hobby. They are really unique compared to other lps. Do they have feeding and sweeper tentacles?

I'm pretty sure you can get them in the states. And they appreciate a feed like most LPS and don't have the longest sweepers (5cm max as far as I've seen) but they will start killing absolutely anything they touch almost immediately.

 

[wilecyote007]

Thanks a bunch bid. I am new to reefing and it is neat to see natural habitat life.

 

[A Toadstool Leather]

I'm pretty sure you can get them in the states. And they appreciate a feed like most LPS and don't have the longest sweepers (5cm max as far as I've seen) but they will start killing absolutely anything they touch almost immediately.

Seems better than most lps with sweepers many inches long. I kind of want one