cfeist's Aquapod 24

[cfeist]

Just picked up the following CUC to handle the algae.

 

5 Super Tongan Nassarius Snails

5 Astrea Snails

6 Hermit Crabs (small)

1 Scarlet Hermit Crab

 

I float acclimated them for 15 min in the bag, then drip acclimated for 15 more min. They all seem very active aside from a couple of the Astreas which are just sitting on the rock. The small hermits are very active and going crazy with the algae. I'm pretty pleased so far. I may pick up some more depending on how these guys do, but so far it seems alright.

 

I didn't see any Ceriths at any of the stores I went too, so i'll keep an eye out, but the Nassarius are very cool. I love watching them burrow and then leaving a little tentacle out of the sand to keep an eye on things. So far so good. I will be doing water tests this week and making sure everything is in order.

 

Here's a quick photo I did of one of the hermits checking out the Astrea. I'll take some more in the next couple days.

 

[Ocho Cinco]

I added a sally lightfoot crab and he took care of ALL of my hair algae and I haven't seen any grow back!!!

[Lalani]

Bet you're glad to finally have something other than rocks and aptasia in the tank.

[cfeist]

I added a sally lightfoot crab and he took care of ALL of my hair algae and I haven't seen any grow back!!!

 

I haven't read much about the sally lightfoot crab. I would add one but am worried that once he's done with the algae he would be a pest. How is it in you tank, are there any things the sally lightfoot isn't compatible with?

 

Bet you're glad to finally have something other than rocks and aptasia in the tank.

 

Hah, yup. I have been watching these little guys all day today, it's pretty amazing that they hold my interest, I must admit. I love just relaxing and watching everything and taking some photos here and there.

 

I was in the LFS today and walked up to one of the tanks and a cute little yellow clown goby was perched on a rock just staring at me. I hope he's still there in a week or so, I really wanted to get him today, but I knew better.

[burtbollinger]

sally lightfoot are not reef safe, and will kill your livestock...I had one kill and eat a fourline wrasse...my friend's ate a firefish....once they grab on, there is no shaking one off....they are bad news....to remove him, I had to corner him and unfortunatly smash him...capture was just too difficult...and that fourline was expensive.

[Ocho Cinco]

sally lightfoot are not reef safe, and will kill your livestock...I had one kill and eat a fourline wrasse...my friend's ate a firefish....once they grab on, there is no shaking one off....they are bad news....to remove him, I had to corner him and unfortunatly smash him...capture was just too difficult...and that fourline was expensive.

Wow! Well in that case don't get one. I've heard they were reef safe. He never messes with my coral. He dosen't seem to cause any problems and I do know they will eat fish if they can catch them. My Coral Beauty died for no reason, so maybe he had something to do with that.

[ldballoon4]

looks great!

[cfeist]

sally lightfoot are not reef safe, and will kill your livestock...I had one kill and eat a fourline wrasse...my friend's ate a firefish....once they grab on, there is no shaking one off....they are bad news....to remove him, I had to corner him and unfortunatly smash him...capture was just too difficult...and that fourline was expensive.

 

Thanks for the info. I started reading about them last night and seems that may be the case for most of them. Although Ocho has had a different experience, maybe he lucked out. I'll see how the Astreas do for getting rid of the algae.

 

looks great!

 

Thanks for the compliments! Here's some more shots of the CUC at work.

 

This is my most active Astrea in an action shot. I just missed the focus on the macro, but it's still pretty cool with his little eye pokin out.

 

This is one of the Nassarius out and about under the moonlights. They are really cool to watch, and pretty fast at moving and burrowing. Some of them are still burried and haven't come out yet, there are two really active ones out of the five.

 

Here's my favorite and most active hermit so far. He's been munching algae more than the rest, and not leaving his favorite rock. You can see the Scarlet Hermit off in the distance, with his purple corraline encrusted shell. He's the biggest hermit I have and pretty active as well.

 

This is the smallest hermit I have, and he has the only white shell. He's also really cool looking because he has really bright blue eyes. It's been difficult to get a good macro of him so far. Here he is scaling this rock to get up to the algae.

 

Anyone know what kind of snail this is? The LFS wasn't sure and gave it to me as a freebie. I'm not sure if its a Nassarius or something else.

 

 

Also, just did my water tests again. Everything looks great. The only concerns right now are getting the salinity down again to 1.025 from 1.026 and my Ph is around 7.9-8.0 i'm not sure if that should be a concern yet. Please let me know if anything stands out as a problem.

 

Ammonia: 0

Nitrites : 0

Nitrates : < 5

Ph : 7.9

Phosphates : 0

dKh : 12

Calcium : 380-420 (I think its more 380-400, but I may have accidently dripped more than 1 drop towards the end)

 

Sequence of my favorite Hermit checking out the Astrea.

[Ocho Cinco]

Check this out

 

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?...p;#entry1560484

[cfeist]

An adventurous hermit

 

The Astrea wiping the windows

 

Super Tongan getting ready to dive deep

 

Little Hydrozoid?

[Lalani]

Fantastic pictures! I bet you're getting anxious to add fish and corals, huh?

[cfeist]

Fantastic pictures! I bet you're getting anxious to add fish and corals, huh?

 

Ahha, I am dying over here... I have been staring endlessly at the tank all weekend. I've tested the water params at least 3 times in the last few days. Everything is still good. The filter floss is picking out a lot of junk, I will change it out tomorrow, and I just put in the Purigen a few days ago on the second tier of the shelf.

 

I think the first fish I am going to get will be a yellow clown goby. After seeing yours it made me want one, plus it is a small fish and seems like a good slow start. Although I will keep an eye on things and see how I am at the end of the week. My LFS has one for $10 and he was staring at me this past weekend when I was checking out the livestock.

 

Also, I stopped by Fraggle Reef on Sat., wow, there are some amazing corals there. If my tank was ready when I was in there on Sat. I probably would've walked out with a ton of new stuff, lol. I just love the red monti cap he had and although i'm far from starting with some SPS, it does give me something else to look forward to down the road.

 

I must say, these hermits are pretty entertaining. They seem to be up to no good every now and then, but the super tongan nassarius snuck up on one the other day and scared the hell out of it, causing it to lose its grip on the rock and fall all the way down to the sand below, it was classic.

[cfeist]

So here's the latest. I stopped by the LFS the other night and picked up 2 turbo snails and 1 porcelain crab, and couldn't be happier with my choices, i'll get to that in a minute.

 

The water parameters are checking out as follows:

Ammonia: 0

Nitrites: 0

Nitrates: 5

Ph : 8.0

Salinity : 1.026 (grrr!! this is such a pain to lower for some reason)

Calcium : 420

dkh Alk : 12

I will do some more recent Alk and Calc tests in the next day or two. I also picked up some B-Ionic 2 part for the future, not needed at the moment, as my Alk and Calc are decent in the 420 Calc 12 Alk range. I may dose it down the road but only if I need it. It was only $9.99 and have heard good things about it as far as 'additives' go.

 

I am starting to notice areas that were recently covered by algae and since cleaned (thank you CUC and my MVP's the turbo snails for doing such a nice job) are now starting to show various colors such as purple, pink, green etc. and appear to be corraline algae growth. I am completely amazed by the 2 turbo snails I picked up just last night. They have completely and utterly devoured all of my algae concerns in a night and they are STILL going. I never thought they would wipe this little rock I had up front clean in less than 3 hours.

 

Here's the rock before a few days ago (mind you, it did get much worse with more algae)

Here's the rock after the turbo slaughter overnight (notice the corraline that was hidden before)

 

Here's the two turbos in action

 

Still going...

 

Here's the little porcelain crab shortly after acclimation, he is so much fun to watch, and he's very active and right in the front of my tank. He seems to love the front rock and ledges himself in the crevice and perches up there feeding most of the day. I'm very happy with this little guy. I'll try and get a sharper photo of him feeding in the next few days. This was last night so the noise level is a bit high due to the high ISO.

 

His favorite rock...

 

Here he is again, like I said, he's been nonstop after a long and slow acclimation. I haven't see him stop feeding more than a few minutes during the time I'm home, and he still hasn't left his rock.

 

Thing's are going great and i'm really happy with the addition of the 2 turbo snails and the porcelain crab. I get a kick out of watching them just bulldoze and vacuum the algae off the rocks. I also spot fed the sand for a test with some Cyclopeez and the Nassarius snails rose from the sandbed and went absolutely INSANE. There was one Nassarius on the glass towards the top of the tank and he literally LET GO and free fell all the way to the sand bed and charged the spot where I dropped the food. Amazing... they continued to scramble and crawl over one another to get any bit they could...

 

Looking forward to getting a small fish this weekend if all of my parameters stay in check. I will be doing a weekly water change as well. I am planning on getting a Yellow Clown Goby, but we shall see. I figure if everything seems good that I will start off with a very small fish, that won't contribute too much to the bioload and ease into it...

 

Let me know what you think! And I'd love to hear suggestions for a first fish etc... Thanks for looking.

[Lalani]

Its looking really good, Colin, and I'm glad you're slowly building up the livestock. Every time I drop a piece of shrimp into the tank for the CUC, the nassarius snails remind me of zombies when they rise out of the sand. I love the porcelain crab, and I hope to have one eventually also. And you know I'm all for getting a YCG, they are too amusing.

 

Edit: How low do you want your SG? Natural seawater is 1.026, and thats where I keep mine.

[cfeist]

Its looking really good, Colin, and I'm glad you're slowly building up the livestock. Every time I drop a piece of shrimp into the tank for the CUC, the nassarius snails remind me of zombies when they rise out of the sand. I love the porcelain crab, and I hope to have one eventually also. And you know I'm all for getting a YCG, they are too amusing.

 

Edit: How low do you want your SG? Natural seawater is 1.026, and thats where I keep mine.

 

Yup, your YCG is the reason for me wanting one... plus I stopped by the LFS and saw one and it was so cool. They're personality is so big for how tiny they are.

 

I'm glad you mentioned the SG. I was worried because mine was reading 1.027 for a while during the cycle and I couldn't drop it for some reason, I finally got it down to 1.026 and was under the impression that 1.025 is the max for a reef, but now that you mention your tank is running just fine at 1.026 I feel much better. I thought that a slightly higher than 1.025 salinity would be better than a low salinity, but wasn't sure.

 

I'm really happy with the Porcelain crab. The Astreas pushed him out of his little rock this morning and now he's moved to the back, hopefully he will explore a bit and find a good spot or just go back to his rock after the snails are gone. There is a perfect little cave in one of the big pieces of LR I have that I wanted him to check out, but I'm not going to harass or force him to look at it, he seems very comfortable so far.

[cfeist]

Well, everything still checked out as far as the water tests. I was able to drop the salinity down to 1.025 and everything is as follows:

 

Ammonia:0

Nitrites :0

Nitrates: <5

Ph: 8.1

Salinity: 1.025

 

I did a 10% water change on Friday and made a trip to Fraggle Reef, picked up a couple of LPS frags, then headed down to another LFS and picked up the Yellow Clown Goby that i've had my eye on for the past couple of weeks.

 

He has been adjusting to his new environment fairly well. I have him already eating a mixture of frozen mysis and cyclopeeze which is good because I have heard others having problems with clown gobies eating. So far his favorite spot is the Magfloat in the corner of my tank, but he's slowly been leaving it to explore the rocks and the other side of the tank. He seems a bit intrigued by his own reflection, but he definitely is aware of me staring into the tank and sometimes just swims up front and perches on the rock to stare me down, he has quite the personality, which is the primary reason why I wanted him in the first place. He definitely stood out in the LFS among the others. I love his bright color and personality so far, and hopefully he will get more comfortable with the tank in the next week and leave his Magfloat refuge.

 

Yellow Clown Goby

 

 

 

As I mentioned I also stopped by Fraggle Reef on Saturday. I am completely amazed at some of the corals there... I had to stop myself due to the maturity of my tank on some of the pieces, not to mention apparently I have quite the expensive taste when picking out frags in the tank. Anyway, I picked up a couple LPS frags with the help of Miguel. I forgot the name of one of these, so if you could ID please be my guest.

 

Micromussa Minuta

 

Blastomussa Merletti

 

ID anyone?

 

I am having some slight problems with my turbo snails. They are so efficient in cleaning, but they are just mindless bulldozers at the same time. I really don't want to return them but I am keeping an eye on them this week as they have knocked over my frags a couple times trying to clean the frag plugs they are mounted on of algae...

 

The Taste of Efficiency

 

I'm going to do some cleanup maintenance and keep an eye on the parameters this week and hopefully if everything goes well I will be ready for some additions by the end of the week. I am looking into a few things, a pair of occ. clowns (very small), sixline wrasse, yasha goby w/shrimp, or a jawfish... not all of the above of course.

 

Thanks for takin a look. Any comments or suggestions regarding the tank or livestock are welcome.

[Lalani]

Your YCG is cute.....

You should name him Ted..... or Fred.

When I first got mine, he didn't eat anything but a few pods for an entire week and he was getting really skinny. On the 7th or 8th day I had him, he finally started eating the frozen and flake food, and he's been a pig ever since. You lucked up and didn't have to worry!

 

And those corals are beautiful! Your tank is going to be gorgeous.

[hoganrj]

Looks great. I believe the coral you want the ID on is a Monti. Not possitive though. The yellow clown goby is awesome!

[cfeist]

Your YCG is cute.....

You should name him Ted..... or Fred.

When I first got mine, he didn't eat anything but a few pods for an entire week and he was getting really skinny. On the 7th or 8th day I had him, he finally started eating the frozen and flake food, and he's been a pig ever since. You lucked up and didn't have to worry!

 

And those corals are beautiful! Your tank is going to be gorgeous.

 

Thanks! I asked the guy at the LFS what he was eating and if he was eating and he squirted some frozen mysis in the tank while I was at the store and the YCG swam like crazy and ate a few pieces up in no time. It made me feel a lot better once I got him home and he started eating the mysis in the new tank. He is a little shy, but every so often he comes right up to the front of the glass and hovers while looking at me, or perches on a rock up front. I am anxious to get some more corals and things for him to perch on. I'd like to get him off of the Mag float, lol. I think he likes it because its nice and flat/smooth and up in the corner away from the spotlight.

 

Looks great. I believe the coral you want the ID on is a Monti. Not possitive though. The yellow clown goby is awesome!

 

You know, now that I look at it that makes a bit more sense, but I wasn't sure if the polyps of a monti extend like this one does. That being said I also wouldn't have purchased an SPS frag and I don't think the guy at FraggleReef said it was a monti or was in the SPS side of the tank. He told me the name and I thought it was an LPS but I will ask him next weekend. I definitely would have passed on the monti because of my tank being so new... although out of all the SPS I will definitely have some monti's in the tank in the future. Thanks for the compliments, the YCG is a great fish so far.

 

EDIT:

So it turns out the Coral I was asking the ID for is in fact an SPS, however from reading a bit it is a very hardy SPS at least.

 

Cyphastrea Japonica

[hoganrj]

Very cool. Supprised to see that they classify it as a Branching coral. Looks like more of an encrusting coral.

[cfeist]

Very cool. Supprised to see that they classify it as a Branching coral. Looks like more of an encrusting coral.

 

Yea that must be an error. I have been reading about it and most of the links seem to say it is in fact an encrusting coral, and just looking at it growing on the frag plug it looks to be encrusting, not branching... however it may still be too early to tell.

[cfeist]

Here's some new shots of my Yellow Clown Goby. He's no longer hiding behind his mag float and he's now perching front and center of the tank. He even loves to get his picture taken, and I can tell that he is fully aware of me and whenever I hide from him he slowly comes looking for me, I love it! ahha

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Any suggestions for tankmates? I was thinking a pair of tiny occ. clowns, a sixline wrasse (not sure about this one) or pearly jawfish/shrimp goby... or something completely different that would work well? Let me know what you think.

[cfeist]

Here's some more corals I picked up at ReefHotSpot (great place) They are moving into a new facility and aren't completely setup, but if you are in LA I would check em out.

 

Electric Green Brain (after feeding it a mysis)

Closeup

 

It looks amazing under the lunar lights, i'll be sure to snap a shot tonight. The green is amazing, it was much more green than any of the other brains in the tank, and the tentacles it puts out are really cool.

 

I also picked up some zoas for a very good price ($4!!). Can anyone ID them for me? These also look great in the tank... I mounted them to a few smaller pieces of rubble with super glue gel and that seemed to work great. Some of the smaller frags are a little more sensitive right now and close up a lot more than the larger frag, but they have been open most of the time and seem fine.

 

 

If anyone has an ID for these I would appreciate it, as I am fairly new with zoas and most of them look so similar. I notice the one frag of green zoas has tiny white specks around the mouth, which is cool. Thanks in advance.

[Ocho Cinco]

Not sure on the zoa ID ( just look like basic greens to me). That brains is sweet!! Is it a trach?

[cfeist]

Not sure on the zoa ID ( just look like basic greens to me). That brains is sweet!! Is it a trach?

 

Yup its a trach. It's an electric green one and it looks awesome! I'll have to get a few shots under the lunar lights it looks like its glowing at night. I wouldn't imagine the zoas to be anything special because of their price, but you never know... I like the ones with the little spots around the center, and I got a good amount of polyps to start some growth on the rocks finally! Thanks for the reply.