Hi John,
As stated I have a question about Fuzzy Chitons. I was wonder what kind of algae they eat? Are they suitable for a 75gal aquarium? If so is one good enough? We have an amazing clean up crew already thanks to you but feel the need for some new additions. We have a little hair algae that no one seems to like and we have some red rubbery macro algae (I will post a picture when I get a chance). I have never had good luck with emerald crabs and don't have enough hair algae for a sea hair. Wondering what you would do? Thanks in advance, David

chitons eat diatoms, film algae, cyano, hair algae and shorter fuzzy algae. They may eat some short wirey reds too, depends...they are slow moving, (even for gastropods), and are better for keeping a certain area clean, rather than catching up with an outbreak. Nice thing though is they make the rock 100% clean before moving on.

for small stubborn GHA spots, these guys are ideal. If you have small tufts pop up throughout the tank, hermits might be a better choice. They kill snails which sucks, but they have vision and can move fairly well so they are more likely to hit the spots, where the chiton will find something in its diverse diet to eat close to where it is.

shoot me a pic of the red rubbery algae when you can. It doesn't sounds like it is on the menu for a chiton, but worth a shot. Emeralds are that way....the small juvies are good, the large adults are practically useless.

I can't get one of my chiton to leave the glass and that's pretty much one tank I never go over with a mini mag.

The others do a great job with the rockwork.

Ok good to know, thanks John. We were also gonna pick up a few bags of pods from you. We have a 75 with 80ish lbs of live rock, a deep sand bed and a few pod eaters so our pod popuation is kind of dwindling. We have a sump with chaeto too. Just wondering how many bags of pods we should get for our tank. We were thinking 3. I'd like to put two in the tank at night and one In the sump. What do you think? Thanks again!

Once I put some chaeto in my display where my mandarin couldnt get to it, he got fat. Any strings, or flyaways get taken care of by my tangs.

if you already have them the pod bags wont do much. they are pretty much only useful for seeding Tisbe sp. copepods. Once you have them no need to keep adding a seed culture, only a days worth of food in each bag for a mandarin. You will just have to get the numbers up.

Hmm the problem though is that we can't find any in our sump with the chaeto and there are hardly any at all in our display... Dwindling was putting it nicely. . We have a flame wrasse, two tail spot blennies, and a skunk cleaner shrimp who all eat the pods. Chaeto in the display might be an idea, just don't know where we would put it. I was hoping the pods would kind of re seed our population. We started with basically dead rock, and have never had a large pod population. I've used two bottles or Ocean Pods and a couple bottles of tigger (which we now know don't reproduce in warm waters) in our tank so I don't think they ever really got seeded. What do you truely think we should do?

hmmm...there are pods in the brown gracilaria...caprellid amphipods...in the ulva too to some extent. The smaller copepods are really just confined to the Reef Pods product now. Had some in the tanks, now the caprellids dominate.

go for it if you think re-seeding might help your situation, you would know their status better than me. I just wanted to let you know about their numbers and what not.

From what I'm given to understand, tigger pods actually do reproduce in the typical tropical reef tank system, what was said about them not reproducing was a misinterpretation of one study--in that study it showed that tigger pods collected from ~1000 mi north of where they were collected by reef nutrition, if acclimated to warmer waters, the sexes would settle out to be 51% male 49% female ... hardly a recipe for dying out.

The range of the tigger pods is really wide, they're all up and down the Pacific coast of the US. Reef Nutrition cultures them in waters that run from 79 to 89 degrees.

i have heard the same thing too recently. a staff member from reed mariculture was talking about it. the problem according to some info they had was they take long to reproduce, and that might be the problem people have breeding them. it is a popular product, you can find someone on NR who had success with them I am sure. Not sure they went that high, I though it was 40-80 degree temps...

I was just wondering the same thing for 6 month's and still can't get reliable info I hear they are sub-tropical and not tropical

I found this info here thou

http://web.uvic.ca/~banholt/anhlabsite/tigs.html

http://www.racerocks.com/racerock/eco/taxa...arpacticoid.htm

they kill snails!?!

Referring to the hermit crabs. The crabs will kill the snails and move into a new home after they stuff their bellies.

yep i meant the hermits. i never learned about noun usage in school.

well i just broke some toes slamming a door shut...lol. ..i am out for the night

Ouch! Watch them footsies john. You need them to go diving.

i am so clumsy they lost feeling some 5 years or so ago. i am all set. is it sad this is morning for me?

Diabetes?

repeated toe stubbing