found a video on youtube with the guys i had mentioned in my earlier post…they do sell the aquariums through their site and detail maintenance/requirements
On another reef forum that i like to visit someone is trying to set up a aquarium with jellies if you wanna take a look here is the link
http://www.reefaquariumforum.com/mangrove-environment-t3736.html
I have no hands on experience with either Cassiopeia or other jellys, but I hope that changes in the near future. I did do a bit of reading on them in the past as I was preparing to apply for a job at the baltimore aquarium. As ravensfan mentioned they really do require specialized environments and don’t do well in reef tanks.
I have to agree with Ian as well about the cuttlefish tank. I have always wanted to do one and find them to be very interesting critters. I followed some around in the Caribbean for a while then when I thought I lost them I swam away for about 5 minutes only to realize they had started to follow me. Very intelligent curious critters.
Why did spell check work in a PM, but not in this thread. Now I’m going to look like a moron, lol.
[quote=“Gordonious, post:23, topic:563”]
Why did spell check work in a PM, but not in this thread. Now I’m going to look like a moron, lol. [/quote]
don’t blame it on THIS thread jon YahoO
[quote=“Gordonious, post:23, topic:563”]
Now I’m going to look like a moron, lol. [/quote]
The key (and incorrect) part of this statement is the word Now verdict_in
I followed some around in the Caribbean for a while then when I thought I lost them I swam away for about 5 minutes only to realize they had started to follow me. Very intelligent curious critters.
+1 When I played with them they were very skittish at first, then they became curious, and then when I left they started following! Very cool.
Funny guys.
I’m trying to talk Rich into setting up a cuttlefish tank in the shop. Maybe when we finally get paid for the shark tank. If we ever do. 
pretty nice box jellyfish on “7 pounds”. just watched it the other day. he kept it in a round acrylic tank. no filter or anything. (i know!! it’s a movie!!) lol
[quote=“Gordonious, post:27, topic:563”]
I’m trying to talk Rich into setting up a cuttlefish tank in the shop. Maybe when we finally get paid for the shark tank. If we ever do. [/quote]
That would be awesome, whats the shark tank like?
You can catch all kinds of baby sharks in the bay in the spring. keep em a while then let em go. Sand sharks would be good, no teeth!!
Wouldn’t recommend doing this. Pop them in a home aquarium next to your salt tank. Give the animal some tropical disease it shows no syptoms of and put it back in the wild? I wouldn’t recommend doing this.
I thought we were talking a separate shark tank. you can’t put those sharks in with your other fish and crabs and snails. shark bait.
Even still anyone that keeps a tropical tank would be hard pressed to keep their hands from going from one tank or another. Or using the same buckets. Or perhaps the same pipette to do a water test…
sharks dont get the same deseases as our tank fish. they are mostly immune. they have their own specifically evolved deseases to live with. but not many. they dont even get cancer.
No shortage of sand sharks. go bottom fishing in the bay or near shore ocean and see how many you pull up. or maybe a dogfish. or baby bull shark in the spring. they spawn in the bay. you can catch nice 200 pounders in the bay in the spring.
http://mapping2.orr.noaa.gov/portal/Delaware/lifehistory.html
Or maybe, wouldnt it be nice to raise some baby short nosed sturgeon fish. and then release them to the bay? nobody fishes for them now since they are nearly extinct and protected by law. the short nose is a small fish. only 40 inches long max. but the atlantic sturgeon, which also spawns in the bay, gets up to 1000 pounds. It is recorded by early settlers of the chesapeake and delaware bays, that sturgeon were so numerous you could walk across estuary waterways on their backs and not get your boots wet. but the golden age of america with its apetite for caviar and sturgeon steak fished them to near extinction in a meer 20 years back in the late 1800s to early 1900s. They still havent recovered very much. just a few around.
The delaware indians and early settlers used to lasso them with rope and pull them ashore for dinner. It took several men to pull one in.
lets raise sturgeon. I caught a baby 10 inch one once in my minnow trap. cool, like a little aligator, almost with all its armor plates. I let it go.
But sand bar sharks should be easy to keep in a wading pool tank.
I dunno. Not trying to argue with you too much Ken, but none of us can say we completely understand all the diseases and relationships that occur in our oceans. In my opinion I would leave the catch, raise, and release to marine biologist.
Do you remember how many long spine urchins there used to be in the Caribbean? No shortage of them by far, that is until a single disease killed off 99% of them and almost completely messed up the reefs in the Atlantic. All it takes is one disease to really screw up the whole ecosystem.
“nobody fishes for them now since they are nearly extinct and protected by law.” I would be real nervous about trying to collect anything protected by law. If you wanted to do something like this I would contact someone at UD’s College of Marine and Earth Studies and perhaps try to volunteer to work with them on an effect like this. Hate to see someone in hand cuffs or worse… like selling off their reef tank to pay for the fines! (ok perhaps to some the former would have been worse, but I love my tanks, 
)
I agree 100% with Jon on this one… NEVER release anything you kept in an aquarium back to the wild. Even the fish foods that people use can transfer diseases. How would any person feel if they were the ones responsible for wiping out an entire species because they let something go? I know that “Nemo” wants to get back to the ocean, but thinking like that is why we have Lionfish in the Atlantic now, which are becoming a major problem all across the Carribean since they have no natural predators there. The same thing happens on the microscopic level… even something as simple as using an old powerhead or heater could potientally transfer a pathogen that could wipe out the carribean ecosystem. Just not worth the risk IMO.
No, I’m talking about walking down the block to the delaware bay, catch a small sand bar shark and raise it a while in your tank, its own tank and then release it when it gets too big. pretty much what the new jersey aquarium does with its brown water bay/ocean stock. all local fish indigenous fish and critters. They live in the cespool of the delaware bay into which we flush or spill or run off everything from the whirlie, kitchen sink, road and sewer run off, and chemical plant waste water. including our used tank water after water changes from QT tanks for sick fish. . we would be doing them a favor. sharks dont seem to get sick. even the fish nurseries that raise oysters, stripe bass and sturgeon fish to release and replenish the wild stock use commercial fish feed pellets. so what’s the dif?
make your case.
Sorry Ken, I thought you were saying to put them in with the rest of the tank… not their own tank. The difference there is even if you go to Horn point or a facility like that, you will see that they keep their tropicals (clownfish) very seperate from the local fish and that they sterilze everything before it goes from one operation to another. The food pellets that they use are also quite different that what we use in the aquarium hobby, which are made from tropical stuff. Just look at using live brine shrimp in a seahorse aquarium. Unless you decapsulate the brine, they can introduce hydroids to the tank, and they dont even come from an ocean, where they live is much more saline. If something that large can hitchike in on a dry food like brine shrimp eggs, imagine what could hitchike in on something like frozen krill or something like that. Viruses and bacteria arent very large, but they can have huge impacts.
I’m not saying that it cant be done, or that people dont do it, just that it isnt something that everyone should run out and do. Putting in the fish is fine, but its when you return them that it can be a problem.
I would have my doubts on any pathogens spread from you cross contaminating food/equipment then releasing back into local waters would have much of an effect over what I’m sure is already being done/has been done by people so far. Another thought to look at is these diseases/ect. WILL spread eventually, the small introduction of it from a local aquariast (that is def. spelled wrong) might actually breed an immunity to it to the local wildlife.
Think about the zebra muscles that are now taking over. They came from Asian ships ballast water, if an organism THAT big made it through, what other pathogens do you think they brought with them and DUMPed in LARGE volumes into our local waters?
I’m not saying do it, I’m just giving some more food for thought.
Blah… I typed out a huge response, and it disappeared. Let me try this again.
If you have any doubts about the possibility of cross contamination, come to DSU for a day. We will go over to the USDA lab where Keleigh works and you can watch how they have to treat anything that is exposed to a virus or harmful bacteria. You MUST autoclave everything, because that is the only way to kill these. You can wash the instruments in Clorox and let them dry for as long as you want, Viruses can persist.
The argument that “everyone else has done it, so its fine for me to” is something that I really have a problem with. Its a way to justify not acting responsibly because you assume that someone else has done it. I’m sure that that is exactly what the guy who released the Lionfish into the Carribean was thinking. Now we have a nuisance species that is rapidly spreading, and nobody knows exactly what will happen as a result.
Whats the worst that could happen you might ask? Well take a look at a farily simple example. The Eastern Oyster (Crassostrea virginica) industry. Because someone brought the Pacific Oyster (Crassostrea gigas) to the Chesapeake bay to culture, MSX and Dermo were released into the bay, and subsequently into the Delaware bay. Now, because of those introductions, the Eastern Oyster stock in the Delaware bay is 1% of what it used to be, and the Chesapeake bay isn’t even that. This simple introduction of 2 microscopic pathogens that don’t have any affect on the Pacific Oyster has accidentally caused the downfall of a whole species in the area. Yes, some Eastern Oysters are building up an immunity… In about 300 years we may be back to the stock that we had previously if there was no fishing pressure or problems from pollution. I would hardly venture to say that is a good thing that they are “building up a resistance”
Yes, ballast water discharge is a problem. But that is not something that we can control directly. This is. There is speculation that the Diadema die off in the Carribean that resulted in a major hit to the reefs was possibly due to aquarists. The disease that is responsible is common in the pacific and the endemic organisms have built up a resistance. When it hit the Carribean, it killed off almost all Long Spine Urchins. Yes, this could have been ballast water. Or it could have been water from a marine tank that housed a long spine urchin. Since there is a ban on any Diadema urchins from the Carribean, if you have one in your tank, its from the Pacific. Its just as possible that someone thought they would just “release” their long spine urchin back into the ocean because “hey, there are long spine urchins out there, that must be where it came from.” Its just as likely that this happened as a ballast water discharge that brought the virus over. There is no way to point the blame, but we as aquarists must do our part to ensure that our hobby does not destroy the reefs.