#358: 284L Biotope Aquascape North Carolina Coastal Biotope

Erica Lynn Lyons Winston Salem, United States

Comments

Fun! I wish you hadn't mentioned the non-native fish since we can't see them anyway! :-) Thank you for being brave enough to enter this unique tank!
— Karen Randall
Even though it's a salt water tank and is not strictly a biotope due to the attempt to spawn non-native fish (as the aquarist is aware of and has noted) I think this is appropriate for our contest and is the type of marine entry I would like to encourage folks to enter in the future.
— Phil Edwards

Aquascape Details

Dimensions 122 × 46 × 53 cm
Title North Carolina Coastal Biotope
Volume 284L
Background The background is made from tufa rock gravel, Great Stuff foam, and a sheet of sytrofoam. It was designed with crevasses to increase the surface area available for the copepods to breed, and allowed them to have a sustainable population without the use of towers of live rock. Daily feedings with microworms and brine shrimp cysts also took some pressure off of the endogenous copepod population, but it was good to have them in there because seahorses, lacking stomachs, are always hungry.
Lighting One four 54 watt bulb T5HO. Two bulbs are 10,000K and two are actinic. One 30 watt T8 with two 2750 lumen 6500K full spectrum Daylight Deluxe bulbs.
Filtration Aqueon 06079 QuietFlow 55/75 Power Filter, 400-GPH
Plants Caulerpa prolifera was chosen because it is found off of the coast of North Carolina (where I live), and is one of the plant species preferred by hippocampus zosterae (who are also native to North Carolina). As you can see, the seahorses readily wrap their tails around the caulerpa and use it as an anchor. Caulerpa is a macroalgae instead of a vascular plant, but it is very similar in appearance and growth habits to freshwater vallisneria americana. This is basically a saltwater planted tank.
Animals Hippocampus zosterae population maximum at one point reached 70 individuals including babies.

Nonnative fish include one male and one female synchiropus splendidus, which were visible only infrequently. They prefer to hide in the caulerpa prolifera, and I just had them in the tank in case they wanted to spawn. They eat the same microfauna that seahorses do (newly hatched brine shrimp, microworms, copepods).
Additional Information The substrate is pure clay kitty litter topped with a thin layer of crushed coral to stabilize pH and increase dissolved calcium. This represents the mud and rock based ground found off the coast of North Carolina. Foods included microworms, brine shrimp, and copepods.

Here is a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppOte9qOb9M

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