Chesapeake Bay Oyster Reef Biotope Tank

[SmokinDaReefer]

Love the shell scape btw. Wish I had thought of that when I started mine again. I eat enough oysters that I could've filled the tank, haha.

And I'm extremely interested to see what happens when you drop live ones in. That will be a clean water tank with mussles and oysters in it. Each one cycles so much water, doubt you would need water changes.

 

[Chasmodes]

Thanks Smokin. It's never too late, plus, gathering shells from this point forward should be filling and fun at the same time What is your setup now, local stuff?

 

[Chasmodes]

So there's a species of butterfly fish that lives in the bay? Would have never guessed that...

We get some tropical strays, especially the further south you collect toward the mouth. Spotfin butterflyfish are the most commonly collected, but there have been others documented. There's a list of species of just about everything documented as being collected or sampled from the bay. I'll see if I can find it. The only problem that I see is that it doesn't specify exactly what part of the bay that they were collected. There's another website that does this, but it doesn't have as many species listed. Interesting stuff!

 

[SmokinDaReefer]

Thanks Smokin. It's never too late, plus, gathering shells from this point forward should be filling and fun at the same time What is your setup now, local stuff?

Not local, love the idea, I went tropical with mine.

Wonder if using oysters or mussles in a sump would be beneficial for water filtration. Thinking this might be a worthwhile thing to research.

 

[donnievaz]

Not local, love the idea, I went tropical with mine.

Wonder if using oysters or mussles in a sump would be beneficial for water filtration. Thinking this might be a worthwhile thing to research.

I don't see how it couldn't be. Check out this video.

https://oysterrecovery.org/blog/oyster-filtration-video/

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Very cool and following!

 

[SmokinDaReefer]

I don't see how it couldn't be. Check out this video.

https://oysterrecovery.org/blog/oyster-filtration-video/

precisely, my only fear would be enough food for them, but I would think a mature tank w/ a decent bio load would provide that.

 

[SBlisters]

This is SUPER cool

 

[Chasmodes]

precisely, my only fear would be enough food for them, but I would think a mature tank w/ a decent bio load would provide that.

Or supplement with plankton... maybe a DIY plankton farm I wonder if feeding them yeast would work?

 

[Chrisfish]

I live on the Virginia side of the Chesapeake bay and love eastern shore oysters, will definitely be following

 

[SmokinDaReefer]

Or supplement with plankton... maybe a DIY plankton farm I wonder if feeding them yeast would work?

I'd think that yeast would really make a mess in the DT, but if your goal is primarily just keeping oysters/mussles, I would think that would work. Brine farm would work also i think.

 

[Maritimer]

That 'scape is truly remarkable!

When I was a teen, I had a small native tank (Long Island Sound) and our local aquarium club would go out and collect tropicals in the fall at Shinnecock Inlet. It was a ton of fun to find boston bean boxfish, northern sennet barracudas, lookdowns, permits, jack crevalles, spotfin and foureye butterflies, short bigeyes, seahorses - even a school of small cobia one year! And then there was the time I found a large adult blue-ring angelfish washed up on the beach . . . I'm thinkin' someone broke down a tank. (-_-,)

I remember that tank as being utterly fascinating, as close as I could get to a reef tank at the time. Minnow traps, umbrella nets, two-person seines ... and a lot of time spent puttering about in the low tide zone, and underneath docks . . .

~Bruce

 

[Chasmodes]

Thanks Bruce.

I remember that tank as being utterly fascinating, as close as I could get to a reef tank at the time. Minnow traps, umbrella nets, two-person seines ... and a lot of time spent puttering about in the low tide zone, and underneath docks . . .
~Bruce

Collecting is a lot of fun. That is part of the appeal of doing this. I have an idea of what I'll find, but you really never know what will turn up in your net!

 

[Chasmodes]

Hi everyone.

If anyone is following my build, I created another thread on the tank builds forum and will be posting there from now on. To see the latest updates, please click here https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/chesapeake-bay-oyster-reef-biotope-tank.303105/ as I will no longer be updating this thread:

Thanks.