Decent snorkeling around Corpus/Padre Island/Port A

[msmith619]

Can you collect there and do those corals do well in the aquarium?
Mike

[Third Coast Tropical]

there is really only whip coral on the jetties, not much else or what you may be thinking is there.....its not a tropical reef...it is a temperate rockey substrate.......dont take corals........only take critters, please.......another month or 2, and there should be more tropical fish species showing up.....

[glennr1978]

Your best bet for some decent snorkeling is going to be a little later this summer. We've had surf for over a month straight now (which is good for me!!), and you have to wait until it goes flat. Then it has to stay flat for at least a couple days (it stays flat for up to 6 weeks at a time durning the mid summer months) before the visibility gets any good.

I've seen all of the fish listed by the others plus the occassional queen angel, some sort of damsel (it was yellow w/ blue and black spots all over it. very cool little fish), and a bunch of others.

There is a gut on the north side of the north packery jetty (the beach side), about 3/4 down the jetty, and about 30' off the jetty. The water there is probably about 15' deep and is a HAVEN for big speckeled trout during the summer. I've seen tons of ~26"+ fish there a few times over the past couple of summers. In fact, I helped a friend of mine catch a few one day. He was fishing from the jetty and I was swimming around "spotting" fish for him. It actually worked extremely well.

[Squiers007]

If you do want to try and keep some whip coral in your tank go to Packary Channel jetties and pick up the stuff that has washed up off the oil rigs. There always seems to be a bunch of it wedged between the rocks there. One word of caution though, they are not photosynthetic so you will need to provide them with phyto/zoo plankton for there source of energy. Also, once the tissue starts to fall off there is basically no stopping it. My fiance is doing her masters thesis on fish associations with whip coral and has tried to keep it alive for a while now and the longest we have been able is about 2-3 months and then it just craps out. So good luck if you do find some and want to try it out.

[FossilReef]

If you do want to try and keep some whip coral in your tank go to Packary Channel jetties and pick up the stuff that has washed up off the oil rigs. There always seems to be a bunch of it wedged between the rocks there. One word of caution though, they are not photosynthetic so you will need to provide them with phyto/zoo plankton for there source of energy. Also, once the tissue starts to fall off there is basically no stopping it. My fiance is doing her masters thesis on fish associations with whip coral and has tried to keep it alive for a while now and the longest we have been able is about 2-3 months and then it just craps out. So good luck if you do find some and want to try it out.

Yep, I've been down that road before. I tried some of those right after I moved down here, and despite heavy phyto/zoo feedings they still didn't make it much past 3 months. I did just realize that I have some zoanthids from here, though. I found one polyp right after Ike on the back of a sundial snail at Bob Hall Pier, of all places. Now I've got around 15 polyps and they're still going strong. They're nothing impressive, but hey, it's still nice to say "I've got a coral that I collected myself."

I also just noticed that the spell check on this site highlights "zoanthids"...what in the world, lol.