This year I bought an underwater camera and a mask and snorkel before heading down.  I chose the Pentax W90 from Amazon after a lot of reading.  Below are the pictures and video I took on the trip…

This is a picture from the balcony of our 4th floor condo overlooking the Gulf.

One of the really cool things about the beach is the schools of rays that come through.  I got up early one morning and took these videos

I had really wanted to take video of the manta rays that play in the surf every morning, but they chose to stay pretty far away from me.  However, the cow nose rays were quite a bit more friendly as you can see in the video above.

I spent 3 to 4 hours each day hanging out in the water looking for cool fish to come buy.  About the only fish that stayed around long enough for me to react with a camera was sheepshead.  I took quite a lot of video of sheepshead.  It isn’t easy to tell in the video, but these fish are quite large – roughly 2.5 to 3 feet long.  Several times, I found myself in the middle of a school of these fish.  They didn’t particularly mind me being in the middle of the school, and would only back up slightly if I attempted to touch them.  The demeanor of these fish reminded my very much of cows.  The herd more or less moved together, grazing on anything and everything laying on the bottom and moving on when it was all eaten.  I found one sheepshead, featured in the video below, that had what appeared to be a ramora or some similar fish latched on to it.  The sheepshead did not seem terribly pleased with his “friend”.

Mid week, we rented pontoon boats from a marina inside St. Andrew’s state park and drove the boats over to Shell Island.  Last year, we had a very close encounter with some dolphins and hoped for the same thing this year.  Fortunately, we did find some and they came up to see what we were doing.  It happened very fast, but I managed to get this video:

If you watch very closely, you can see that one of the dolphins that comes closest to our boat has a calf swimming right under her.  That was quite a find.

Shell Island is a barrier island, which means there is a channel of water between it and the mainland.  About 4 miles in is a relatively shallow place – 4 to 5 feet deep where many urchins and sand dollars live.  We dropped anchor there, and most of our group went exploring for shells and sand dollars.  I took off for a grassy area about 100 yards away.  The sandy area was crystal clear, but other than the urchins and dollars, it was desolate.  All of the activity will happen in the grassy areas.

The most interesting thing I found was a number of stingrays parked just outside of the grassy area.  I got some of them on video:

If you listen closely, you can hear me swear into my snorkel when I realize I am on top of a very large (6″) stingray.

We next went to a beach that has a pier.  There were a few interesting things happening there.  First, we saw a puffer fish cruising through.  My kids were giving it a hard time, but I made sure they did not hurt it and that it got released safely:

I swam over to the pier to check out what was living on in around the posts, and this is what I found:

The last place we went was was a very cool cove that is ring by some sand bars:

Behind me on this picture is the deep water channel that leads out to the Gulf of Mexico.  There are jetties at one end of this inlet, and I headed there to see what I could find.  This is what the tip of the jetties looks like above water:

After taking those pictures, I headed out along the channel side of the rocks to take some video:

I have many hundreds of other pictures and hours of video left to process.  As I have time, I will update this post with new pictures and video.

This was a fantastic vacation.  I am very hopeful that the current oil spill disaster in the Gulf does not disrupt this area, but it appears the oil is now headed to Panama City.  Hopefully, the beaches and water ways will be in shape for our visit next year.

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2010 Vacation in Panama City Beach, FL

Filters perform the important task of moving water that contains ammonia and nitrite past the colonies of bacteria.  Insufficient movement of water can result in a toxic build up of ammonia or nitrite, which can’t be processed quickly enough.  This mostly happens in tanks that are overstocked with fish or over fed with too little filtration and water movement.

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Why Proper Aquarium Filtration Is Important

For more information, watch the video located on this page.

Pythons are available at most online and local aquarium stores.

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Python No Spill

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Canister Filters

• Those with an integrated pump or requiring a dedicated pump to push water through the UV filter
• Those that attach to the output of a canister filter.

UV filters can be quite effective at:

• Eliminating “Green Water” algae
• Killing off internal and external parasites, including Ich.
• Preventing  bacterial infections, particularly in tanks that are not kept clean.

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UV Filters

Here is a picture of my gold and black koi:

Here is a zoomed out shot of the pond fish:

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Pond Pictures and Videos

Again, this isn’t a huge forum, but 4 of the top 7 search terms are about eating pet fish.  Looking at the longer list, there are 7 more phrases about eating goldfish.

Can someone please tell me why do so many people ponder whether it’s OK to eat their goldfish?  This is not a rhetorical question.  I really want to know.

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What Is The Deal With People Wanting To Eat Their Goldfish?

A forum member pointed me to a very good resource for getting into African cichlids.  The “Cookie-cutter setup for 55G” recommends a configuration for the tank and some solid options for stocking with fish.  I wish I had found that about 3 weeks ago.

Hopefully this will help someone else avoid the apparent mistake I have.

So, what to do with my bumblebee and kenyi???  I don’t know yet.  I am planning a very large African tank for my basement, and possibly they will end up there.  Otherwise, I will take my own advice on what to do with unwanted fish and put them on Craigslist as free to a good home.

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African Cichlid Stocking Screw Up

It’s hard to get a perspective of how big this thing is, so I took a short video:

Next, I saw the jaw of a Megalodon:

For perspective, I am 6 feet tall, and could have walked through the mouth without needing to duck my head.  Simply massive.

And then there is the thing nightmares are made of…

The Xiphanctinus:

This thing looks truly terrifying in person.  The tag for this guy says that some fossils of Xiphanctinus are found with intact, large fish in it’s stomach.  I took a video of him and his display mate, the super turtle Protostega:

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The Terrible Fish

I thought for a while about the best way to do this.  It seemed to me that a hose siphoning into a bucket would be the most effective – simply vacuuming up the gravel, leaving a bare bottom and sucking up any nasty chemicals that may have built up along with it.  After thinking about it more, that seemed like a lot of work.  So, here’s what I did instead:

Phase 1: Removing the gravel

I got my handy 5G Home Depot bucket and my largest fish net (about 6 inches across).  I started at one end of the tank and scooped up as much gravel as I could, dumping it in the bucket as I went.  This was pretty fast and effective, but there was quite a bit of gravel left in the tank that I simply could not get with the net.

Phase 2: Cleaning up the mess

I took my “Python no-spill” water changer and removed the gravel vacuum head (the clear plastic tub part) by unscrewing it behind the valve.  I attached the python to my sink, and took my large net and placed it directly under the python’s discharge, to catch gravel that came through, so it would not go down my drain.  I turned the water on high to get the most suction.

At the tank, I used the bare of of the python hose like a vacuum, sucking up every last bit of gravel and waste left, leaving a very clean tank bottom.  All of the gravel I vacuumed up ended up in the net in the bottom of my sink.  I simply dumped the net into the bucket and had cleanly transferred all of the gravel from the tank to the bucket.

Phase 3: Rinsing the Sand

I rinsed 2 20 pound bags of argonite sand very well to remove the fine sediment that would could the water using a bucket in my kitchen sink.  This took a looong time.

Phase 4: Sand in the tank

I scooped the sand into a cup, and then lowered the cup into the tank, until I had transferred all of the sand.  Much to my dismay, the water was still turned milky-white, despite my rinsing efforts.

Phase 5: Water changes

I reconnected my python’s gravel vac and performed 3 75% back-to-back water changes to get rid of the cloudiness.  This was pretty effective.

Phase 6: Finishing touches

I had some drift wood in the tank previously, and arranged it to provide a bunch of hiding spots.  I also bought a few pieces of rock, and used some stones to create a few other hiding areas.

Here is the result:

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Converting My Tank From Gravel To Sand