Meet my first pico reef

Ok folks, quite a few updates, and a "name that ugly bugly!" Cos I really don't know what the heck it is.

1) Home distiller arrived a couple weeks ago (yay!). Did water change #2 last week and ammonia is back down to zero. Nitrates between 5-10 and everything stable. Strangely, kH and magnesium kept falling, though calcium and everything else (including pH) remained the same.

Rocks started to get covered in algae.

2) So I bought a clean up crew:
- 2 sexy shrimp
- 1 Tectus snail
- 1 purple zebra dwarf hermit crab

They made quick work of the algae! One day later, the Tectus snail had pretty much demolished all the algae. Meanwhile, the dwarf hermit was the least exciting purchase. It doesn't really do much, just pretty much sits in the same spot, moving around from time to time.

3) And then last night, this appeared out of nowhere:
PXL_20230502_002903517.NIGHT.jpg


I just about threw the whole thing in the garbage. what the heck is this??? It's about an inch long. Google is no help. Bad? Good? Leave it alone? Throw it out?

The bugger must have been hiding in the live rock all along... Ahhh!
 
Lol! Just figured it out--it was the ring cowrie I had also bought as part of the cleanup crew. Looks so pretty when it's not active, and a thorny sluggy mess when it is...

Scared myself silly!
 

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