My UK marine nano aquarium.
Discussion
Hi all,
Just thought I'd share my expereinces setting up a 20litre UK rockpool nano aquarium. At present it's invertebrates only, 2 shrimp, a small shore crab, sea anemone, some sea snails, assorted bightly coloured sea weed and a small starfish, and 5 small mussels as a filtration system!
It's surpsising how much colur and interest you can find locally and how easy it is to keep it all happy. The stock need changing every so often as they tend to outgrow the tank, but given it's all locally gathered UK stock that's no problem, some species don't mix.....crabs eact barnacles in the absent minded way that people eat a bag of pop corn when they aren't even hungry....
I'm working on a cooling system at present, as upto now I've relied on the rather crude method of freezing a block of sea water from the tank in a plastic tub and dumping that in when the temperature gets too high on hot days.....I've purchased a second had beer cooler I'm hoping to adapt to cool the tank. To be honest though it's only a few weeks a year in the UK that it's warm enough to cause a problem.
The fact that the water has remained clear and that everything is working well is making me think of putting together a larger tank/eco system in future, but for now it's a fascinating glimpse into life in a rockpool sitting on my kitchen window!
Anyone else here keep UK spcies either marine or freashwater?
Just thought I'd share my expereinces setting up a 20litre UK rockpool nano aquarium. At present it's invertebrates only, 2 shrimp, a small shore crab, sea anemone, some sea snails, assorted bightly coloured sea weed and a small starfish, and 5 small mussels as a filtration system!
It's surpsising how much colur and interest you can find locally and how easy it is to keep it all happy. The stock need changing every so often as they tend to outgrow the tank, but given it's all locally gathered UK stock that's no problem, some species don't mix.....crabs eact barnacles in the absent minded way that people eat a bag of pop corn when they aren't even hungry....
I'm working on a cooling system at present, as upto now I've relied on the rather crude method of freezing a block of sea water from the tank in a plastic tub and dumping that in when the temperature gets too high on hot days.....I've purchased a second had beer cooler I'm hoping to adapt to cool the tank. To be honest though it's only a few weeks a year in the UK that it's warm enough to cause a problem.
The fact that the water has remained clear and that everything is working well is making me think of putting together a larger tank/eco system in future, but for now it's a fascinating glimpse into life in a rockpool sitting on my kitchen window!
Anyone else here keep UK spcies either marine or freashwater?
I'll see what I can do. It's not "tiny" it's perfectly formed. ;-)
It is small, hence 'mini' invertebrates, my shrimps are about 1.5cm long at present, the crab about the size of a 20p piece, as things grow to large I replace them with smaller specimens and put the larger ones back where I found them.
It is small, hence 'mini' invertebrates, my shrimps are about 1.5cm long at present, the crab about the size of a 20p piece, as things grow to large I replace them with smaller specimens and put the larger ones back where I found them.
http://nativemarine.blogspot.co.uk/
I thought about this for a while, but decided I live too far from the coast now.
Pics and regular updates please.
And please get a cuttlefish or two - fascinating creatures and UK native.
I thought about this for a while, but decided I live too far from the coast now.
Pics and regular updates please.
And please get a cuttlefish or two - fascinating creatures and UK native.
You can get synthetic salt mixes to change the seaweater so even if you live a couple of hours from the sea it's not a huge problem. Only issue might be getting your stock back in time before it expires....I rigged up an aeration pump powered off my cigarette lighter in the car to solve that problem.
If I get a bigger tank I might see about something like cuttlefish. Like the rest of it though it would need to be a baby. One thing I find facinating is watching all of the tiny plankton jigging about. I think one of them is a larval crab.
If I get a bigger tank I might see about something like cuttlefish. Like the rest of it though it would need to be a baby. One thing I find facinating is watching all of the tiny plankton jigging about. I think one of them is a larval crab.
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