Please add Bnts. (Brassanthe) Maikai 'Mayumi' HCC/AOS to the data base.

Here you go Ken.
Orchid (Brassanthe Maikai 'Mayumi')

Ken, that sure is a beauty! I hope you will upload that bloom photo to the database.

I thought I did, Lin.

drdawg said:I thought I did, Lin.

Ken, don't mind me ... I see it now! I think my brain is mush from being so tired. We made a huge move this week, retiring 110 miles farther south in the state and I think my brain is mush ... my husband and I did the move ourselves and we now realize we are both too old for this much work! Added to the chaos of moving all the stuff we've collected in our almost 47 years of marriage, we have a 150 gallon salt water aquarium. We actually bought a new tank and he set it up and a few days ago, mixed the salt water, filled the tank, got the pumps running etc. The fish, coral and all the other live rock and organisms were transported in large buckets full of salt water yesterday. He got all the coral and fish, etc. placed in the tank last night and all seemed well.

About 6:00 a.m. this morning he went downstairs and found salt water all over the tile floor in the family room ... apparently one of his fittings didn't hold! Luckily the tank didn't lose all 150 gallons of water and the fish, etc. are fine but he's had a horrendous mess to clean up this morning! I'm not sure if the area rug can be saved but he was able to use his wet/dry shop vac to suck up as much salt water as possible from the floor and I used beach towels to dry the legs of the furniture that got wet. Thank goodness we don't have any fancy-schmancy floors and furniture in that room that could have been ruined!

Well ... I better get back to work, I feel like I'll be unpacking for months to come!

Moving can be "interesting", Lin. I hate for your salt water mishap, but am glad you didn't loose everything in the tank. I used to have a 100 gal. salt water tank when I lived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and had it in the reception room of my dental office. My patients loved it, but it became too expensive and too much trouble to maintain. I had to travel to New Orleans to purchase material/fish for that tank. There was no one closer than that that carried salt water material. That was over 30 years ago and I am sure things have changed and salt water systems improved since then.

Ken, it is a lot of work ... it's my husband's hobby, LOL all I do is feed them every morning! We had tanks with fresh water fish for a few years back in the early 1970's but he's been into the marine fish for many years now. I know it's a lot of upkeep, he's always having to check this or that with the filters, pumps and all the paraphernalia/mechanical equipment beneath the tank. Marine aquarium systems have become very popular and there are lots of aquarium shops around Florida. I remember my husband telling me that one of the shop owners he's conversed with over the years would go over to the inlet and fill buckets of salt water for the tanks at his shop which would sure be a lot easier than all the mixing and checking salinity etc. that has to be done when doing water changes every so often. We sold our boat a year ago so my husband said he may get our nephew to take him out some time and he'll fill his 5 gal buckets with salt water to have on hand for our aquarium. I know there used to be companies who would go to businesses and maintain marine aquariums.

I bet your patients did love the aquarium in your reception area! It's is very relaxing and calming to watch fish and sea creatures. There's an oral surgeon in Daytona that I went to a few years ago and he had a very large and beautiful marine aquarium system set up in his reception area. I don't know what size the tank was but it was huge and ran down the entire center of the reception area. His son was into the salt water aquariums so he took care of the maintenance for his dad. There are a few restaurants here in Florida that have marine set ups and I used to love flying Southwest Airlines out of Orlando because their concourse had salt water tanks that were nice to look at.

Being near/adjacent to usable salt water and having not only shops that sell marine items but also maintain salt water systems, is sure advantageous. The Mississippi Gulf Coast's salt water (and that of Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas) is not suitable to use in enclosed, salt water systems. Rather than a pure sand bottom, much of this region of the Gulf has a lot of mud bottoms, making the water murky. You have to go way offshore to find suitable water quality.

[quote="drdawg"]Being near/adjacent to usable salt water and having not only shops that sell marine items but also maintain salt water systems, is sure advantageous.

That is true. We used to live on Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands. Our home was just a few hundred feet from the water. Our toilets were all plumbed with salt water, so it was easy to splice in and run the salt water through the fish tanks. It was constantly changing so the fish did very well!

To get fish, all we had to do was go reefing, snorkeling or diving. We were able to find and catch all of the wonderful fish that cost so much if you have to buy them. I got so spoiled. We were able to have the best fish and all of the invertebrates. If something didn't look happy, we'd release it. It was so much fun! These days I'm tempted to start up a saltwater system, because I miss it so much, but I know how hard and how expensive it will be. My husband isn't too thrilled about setting up another labor intensive, and costly hobby!

@plantladylin, I'd love it if you could post somewhere with a few pics of your aquarium. I know it takes a lot of time to get set up after you move. Maybe you could do it later on when things calm down?

@plantmanager, I will try to take a couple of photos soon. We used to deal with a local shop whose owner would go out off shore in the Fla. Keys to catch fish for the trade. Some marine fish are quite expensive; I remember once seeing this cute little @ 1 1/2" Angel Fish in an aquarium shop with a price of $80.00 ... for that really teeny, tiny fish!! We have only 4 fish in the tank and they have been with us for quite awhile. My husband doesn't like adding stuff to the tank very often because of the hassle of having to have a quarantine tank set up to place them in for a few days before adding them to the commuity tank. The fish we currently have are a Foxface, Regal Tang, Naso Tang and a little Yellow-tail Damselfish. There are a few red-legged crabs or blue-legged crabs (or both. LOL, I don't pay much attention) and during the transfer, my husband found a shrimp that he didn't realize was still inhabiting the tank. There are a few snails and hermit crabs in there too along with corals, which I can never remember the names of. We did have a lot of grassy looking coral but it reproduced like crazy and he was always trading it to the aquarium shop for fish food and the little that was left in the tank died off. There used to be some sort of fire coral growing on a couple of the rocks; I don't know if he ever managed to remove it or not but I remember him telling me it was not good to come into contact with it because it was like a jellyfish sting ... ouch!

The tank water cleared up really nice today so I'll try to get a couple of pic's in the next few days.

Thanks for the rundown. It sounds wonderful and I sure do know about fire coral. I encountered it a number of times on my dives. Do you ever have clownfish and their anemones?
I think there are tiny fish costing hundreds of dollars now! I could never have all the fish I used to have.
I got interested in the salt water fish when I was in Girl Scouts. My leader had a place in Baja and she'd go down with us and catch her own fish for her aquariums she had in Arizona. Wonderful memories!

Karen, we had a Maroon Clown at one time; got it as a real tiny fish and it grew huge ... came home one day and found it missing; apparently something spooked it and it jumped out of the tank. We found it wedged behind the tank. It was a gorgeous Clown. We tried a couple of Anemones once but if I remember correctly, I think he ended up trading them for something else because some fish or other wanted to chew them. My husband is a certified diver or I should say was, he hasn't been diving in a long while and just sold his equipment to a student in the dive club at the University where he teaches. I'm not a deep water person at all ... I prefer being in ankle deep water or ON the boat.

Ha, you're the support system. Every boat needs that.

Aw, we had a few fish jump out of the tank too, and we never found them in time. It just seems like something that happens occasionally. Most of the top of the tank was covered by lights and hood, but there was about a 2 inch gap, and somehow they always found it.

My favorite fish of all was an emperor angel. They go through 3 distinct phases and look entirely different as they keep changing. I found a tiny one about half an inch long. We had it for about 2 years. At that point it was full grown, and gorgeous! It was funny in that it could make a loud grunting noise. If we walked by the tank in the dark, it would grunt at us. We didn't know if he was saying hi, or if he was grumping about us disturbing him. Our tank was just 75 gallons, so we ended up having to release him back to the ocean because he was really too large for the tank. After that, we'd frequently see him when we went back to the place where we released him. He'd swim around us and was much less afraid that the others.

I think I still have a few pics of our tank. This has gone way off topic. Is it ok to continue or should we do something in the sandbox?

Karen, that is so cool about your Emperor Angel recognizing you after you released it back to the ocean!
Emperor Angel's sure do look quite different in appearance during the stages from juvenile to adult form and they are really gorgeous! I'd probably have a heart attack if I walked by the tank and heard a grunt coming from the aquarium when I walked by but it is interesting how some fish seem to come to recognize people and are friendly.

The first time I heard that grunt, I was startled. Then it started happening each time anyone walked by in the dark. We called him the Grumperer.

I loved all of the Angel fish. I had multicolor angels, flame angels, and bicolor angels. They are beautiful. Actually, all of the saltwater fish are pretty nice!

I'm wishing I could have a salt tank again, but right now we travel too much. It's hard to get decent fish sitters where we live.