Some vacation pics.

Scott · Post by **Scott** » Sat May 10, 2003 10:48 pm

I just got back and had a great time. The first day in Vero Beach I toured the facility at Mari-tec. They are a aquaculture facility much like ORA but a lot more expanded. No corals though. They had a room filled with breeding pairs of ever type of clownfish, every type of dottyback, a few gobies, a mandarin pair, and some others. These fish were huge! All the clowns were 3-4 inches and the mandarin female was 4 inches easy. I saw their rotifer and algae farming areas and the atchout tanks. Next was the grow out tanks. They had tons of fish in there. In one tank there was approximately 1500 orchid dottybacks. In total there were probable 50 tanks. Each row of tanks had it's own Jacuzzi sandbed filter, a 6000 gal/hr pump and a 200 gallon tub of bio balls. They get 30,000 gallons of water shipped in to do the water changes. Here are a few shot's that I got

reeferpuffer · Post by **reeferpuffer** » Sun May 11, 2003 12:00 am

where are the pics?

reeferpuffer · Post by **reeferpuffer** » Sun May 11, 2003 12:00 am

nevermind...stupid computer

reeferpuffer · Post by **reeferpuffer** » Sun May 11, 2003 12:02 am

whereis vero beach?? i wanna go!!

Amyjoe · Post by **Amyjoe** » Sun May 11, 2003 1:35 am

You can tell just by looking at the pics they are salt water fish, you just cant get that color with freshwater fish. Did you happen to bring back anything Scott ?

ShagMan · Post by **ShagMan** » Sun May 11, 2003 7:21 am

Wow, amazing Scott! I'm with Amy, did you bring anything back? Give me a ring sometime, I'm bored at work today. 4714546 x 2430

SaltnLime · Post by **SaltnLime** » Sun May 11, 2003 11:01 am

I'd like one of those tubs in my garage

Scott · Post by **Scott** » Sun May 11, 2003 12:59 pm

Vero Beach is just between Sabastian and Stuart. It is about 30 min from West Palm beach and 2 hours north of Miami. It is about 5 hours from Key West but that is just a long slow drive.

I brought back 2 orchid dottybacks, 2 neon dottybacks, 2 springer dottybacks, 2 true percs, 2 saddleback clowns, one maroon clown, and different gobies. It sounds like a lot but they are small. I added most to my 55 gallon but it was less than 12 inches of fish. All the dottybacks are getting along now but they all came from the same grow out tank. One of the really cool things that I saw down there was feeding time in the 8000 gallon cobia tank that had about 25 hungry 40 lb cobia fighting over the squid.

Scott

Brandon · Post by **Brandon** » Sun May 11, 2003 1:07 pm

Sounds like an awesome place to see! Was their main filtration jacuzzi sand filters?

reeferpuffer · Post by **reeferpuffer** » Sun May 11, 2003 4:05 pm

that looks awsome, i wish it were closer

Scott · Post by **Scott** » Sun May 11, 2003 7:46 pm

They only had one skimmer for one of the rows of grw out tanks. They had jacuzzi sandbed filters that were about 100 gallons and the bio balls on each row and on one other row they had a 2 micron filtration system that would filter out any parasitic larvae. They do massive water changes twice a week though using sea water transported there via tankers. in the same faciltiy they had same 8000 gallon tanks that contained pompano, tripletail, lookdown, and cobia. These are sold to public aquariums. One of their employees worked at ORA and is trying to start a coral division and they have had some luck with Maxima clams but not enough yet to justify mass producing them.

Scott

reeferpuffer · Post by **reeferpuffer** » Sun May 11, 2003 8:05 pm

dood, that sounds awsome