Newengland coastal area

[sandmanrieast]

I recently visted Mystic Aquarium. They had many reef tanks and coastal tidal pools. My question is I saw a lot of rock incrusted with coralline algie, does it grow off of newengland waters? Has anyone ever threw a hydrometer into the alantic ocean? Would it be good to get a container of real ocean water for reef tanks? by the way the people at the aqaurium didnt know much!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[fishfarmer]

The biggest problem of collecting seawater is the potential for pollution and probable plankton dieoff, but since your in RI, some bays down there do get an influx of tropical fish from the gulfstream. During my schooling at URI we seined up some baby butterflys as late as October. Water temp was in the mid 50's. I also seeded my FO at the time with amphipods from the bay. Coralline algae species do grow in colder waters, don't know if it would survive in the warm waters of a reef though.

 

[afss]

I know i found some this summer in northeren nova scotia waters in the gulf of st. Lawrence. I am sure if it grows this far nrth it would also grow in your areas. I took some back with me that was on a musscel shel, and it has been in my tank and appears to be alive for 4 weeks now.

 

[Anonymous]

Here are the results of a water sample I took from Odiorne Point near Rye, NH on 09 July 2001.

Salinity (s.g.) 1.025
pH 7.8 (this may not be accurate as it was 3-4 hours from collection to testing)
Alkalinity 2.68 meq/l
Ammonia 0.0
Nitrite 0.0
Nitrate 0.0
Calcium 380 ppm
Phosphate 0.0
Silicate 0.5 ppm
Magnesium 1200 ppm

Yes Coralline algae grows in all climates, however I don't think you will have much success with it once you take it from 58 degrees to 84 degrees, however some that I collected during a marine biology field trip in college about 2 miles off Los Angeles harbor did well in my aquarium for about 6-8 months.

You can see coldwater coralline in this pic:

 

[randy holmes-farley]

There's plenty of coralline on the rocks in southern Maine (say, Wells or Biddeford). I put a couple of shells that were covered with coralline into my tank to see what would happen. Not surprisingly, it died in a few weeks. I'd have to add, however, that it had been washing around in the surf and may have been killed that way.

 

[jrodzen]

I used to live in coastal downeast Maine and maintained a couple reef tanks and a coldwater marine tank. We tried using local seawater in the reef tank a couple times but the animals looked better when we did a water change using Reef Crystals instead of ocean water. And, the cold water system did better with local natural seawater. I would keep using whatever your animals are acclimated to, and might be leary against using anything out of Long Island Sound in your reef, mainly because of all the crap in the water from NYC.

If you have ready access to wild caught marine life, why not set up (yet another) tank and put a good chiller on it and raise stuff from New England? Some of the stuff you can get off the Maine coast and tidepools is really gorgeous!

 

[sandmanrieast]

fishfarmer, I agree that was one of my major concerns. the pollution aspect of the bay..
But it s cheaper than byeing it....I must try.....mabe this weekend Ill take a snorkel and take a look...It mystic they had sea apples and sea sluggs...do you guys think they could make it in a warm water enviroment????????

 

[sandmanrieast]

MickAv8r Thats pretty awsum that you took time to test the water quality up there....
Thats some pretty good information........

thanks for the reply

 

[sandmanrieast]

Tim , I just checked out your link....nice tank

 

[Anonymous]

The LI Sound is a lot cleaner than you might think. You are right that collecting on the south shore would be better. But collecting off a pier in the Sound shows similar quality. The sound occasionally has a higher reading of silicates. Probably because the presence of all of that land(runoff). I've used water collected from under the Throgs Neck Bridge,between Queens and the Bronx,with no ill effects. The only thing I needed to do is raise the S.G. from 1.024 to 1.025 and add a little buffer.

GL

Dan