Fish, Invertebrates and More From Charlotte Harbor

"Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved"- Charles Darwin

Fish and invertebrates from the Charlotte Harbor, FL sampling universe in aquaria.

Tank description- 65 gallons, salinity maintained at 22-29 ppt,, room temperature, dead corals, artificial seagrass, limestone rocks, live sand and shell, live and dead bryozoan, artificial seagrasses, one powerhead and two charcoal filters.

Food- marine flakes and pellets, live grass and small pink shimp, dehydrated brine shrimp, dehydrated kelp. Fed once daily late afternoon. Cut fresh or frozen shrimp every third day. The fish and shrimp pick at any live bryozoan placed in the tank.

NEW! Aquarium Video- Serraniculus pumilio, Pygmy sea bass waiting for mud crab to kick up a tasty invert'. Fish was collected in west Pine Island Sound, southwest Florida. 

 





Juvenile Acanthostracion quadricornis, Scrawled

cowfish collected from seagrass trawl in Pine

Island Sound, FL eyeballs a Palaemonetes

spp., Grass shrimp.

Acanthostracion quadricornis, Scrawled cowfish- The most unique characteristic of this deep-bodied fish, even at the juvenile stage- they are covered with hexagonal-shaped dermal plates that are fused together to form a hard carapace. At this stage above, the fish has not yet developed the spines over the eyes that look like cow horns.

We have not had luck with keeping cowfish. You can tell by the shape of the mouth and disruptive coloration that they browse in the seagrasses. We chose not to plant live seagrasses as the lighting is espensive and the bulbs have a short life. As the fish mature, the blue spots turn into blue scrawled lines that run horizontally across the body. We keep the little cowfish a few days for photos and observation, then return them to the sound.

We have observed filefish 'side' up to the juvenile cowfish, obviously requesting cleaning services. This begs the question, are  'cleaning stations' established in the deeper seagrass habitat much like stations on coral reefs or is cleaning opportunistic?

Octopus mercatoris, Pygmy octopus-

See Disappearance of a population of pygmy octopus following a harmful algal bloom
Bridget Nicole Tiffany, Nann A. Fangue*, and Wayne A. Bennett

Department of Biology, University of West Florida, Pensacola, Florida 32514, U.S.A., bridgettiffany@yahoo.com, American Malacological Bulletin, 21: 11-15



Octopus mercatoris, Pygmy octopus
collected from trawl, Pine Island Sound, FL.

The paper above discusses the disappearance of this species from Florida Bay after a red tide algal bloom. The population of O. mercatoris in Pine Island Sound is also mentioned. The paper abovc does far better work of describing the species than I ever could and is interesting from the standpoint that Pine Island Sound has experienced numerous red tide events through the years. We do not specifically target this species, nor do we measure and record their capture. Though we do not consider them rare, they are rare in our gear. We are lucky to capture two to three a year. Given the paper above, O. mercatoris' limited range, and what we know about red tide in our sampling universe, it might be prudent for a mollusk specialist to establish a current population baseline.

The pygmy octopus is a nocturnal predator therefore we were unable to oberve it hunting in the aquarium. We managed to keep this one alive for one year, which is long for the species. During the day, it would wall itself up inside a hole in a rock and bar the doorway with shells. We fed it mud crabs that we collected from clumps of oysters. Upon dropping the crabs in the tank, and if one came close enough, the octopus would drop the wall, quickly snake it's arms out and grab the crab. By morning the octopus would be holed up again with numerous dead crab carapaces outside the burrow.

Crabs- These are just a few species we capture in our Charlotte Harbor sampling. We do not record these crabs in our data, but they do make interesting tank pets.

The Petrolisthes armatus, Green Porcelain Crab is considered an invasive, suspected non-native. The identifying characteristics for this crab are the blue mouth parts and an orange spot on the chelae. Though they will take bits of shrimp and other food, porcelains prefer to filter feed the minute particles out of the water column by waving the feathery maxillipeds and wiping them off on their mouths. Porcelain  crabs are locally popular study subjects as estuarine indicators of fluctuating salinity stress.

We believe this is a Pilumnus spp., Hairy crab. There are over 140 species in this genus that inhabit temperate to tropical waters around the world. Very shy, once we drop a Hairy crab in the tank, it's rare to ever see them again.         

All photos and text are property of Chrystal H. Murray and are not to bereproduced in any form without express permission from the author.