Tampa Bay Saltwater, KP Aquatics, or both for LR?

[eschaton]

Found a decorator crab this morning. He's actually staying in plain sight quite a good deal, though he's so well camouflaged he's hard to even recognize as a crab unless he moves. He has something like blue clove polyps on one of his legs, and a live barnacle on his back.

I've noticed a lot of other motile life for the first time too:

• A longish (like, one inch) clear flatworm on the back of the tank.
• Something small and translucent climbing up the side of the tank that looks like a tiny anenome
• A tiny, white nudi.
• Many numerous small snails
• The first burrowing pod working its way through the sand bed.
• Arms of brittle stars poking out of the rocks.
• A limpet

Oddly, I still haven't seen a single bristleworm.

The rock itself is looking a lot less sludgy and healthy. The sponges have more or less healed up, and there appears to be some new macro growth beginning. There are still some spiobid worm corpses here and there though. I'm realizing some of the rocks are absolutely loaded with little hydroids, which for the time being I'm letting be, because in my experience they die back on their own.

 

[hoju74]

How has the cycle been ? Big ammonia spike ?
A lot of bad hitch-hikers ?
This is my #1 choice for rock for my 120g build so I'm very curious.

 

[eschaton]

How has the cycle been ? Big ammonia spike ?

Zero cycle. No ammonia spike, despite some of the rock looking a bit sludgy the first two days. No algae bloom either, which surprised me. I could drop fish right into the tank and they'd be fine I think - if the LFS were still open here. Maybe I'll order online.

A lot of bad hitch-hikers ?

Depends upon what you mean by bad, but not too many:

• There are a lot of predatory snails (whelks) that I've been fishing out. They're easy to spot, and easy to remove with tongs. I'm just exiling them to my first sump chamber.
• I have seen a number of crabs, including at least one gorilla crab. All of them are very small though (like 1 cm across) and since my tank doesn't have fish yet, I'm going to take my time to trap them.
• I've seen a single aeolid nudi. It's very small, white, with cerata on its back. It probably eats something in the tank right now (probably hydroids) but I'm not in a hurry to eliminate it because I haven't introduced any coral to the tank (other than the few bits which came in on the rocks of course).

 

[hoju74]

Is it fairly porous and was it a pain to aquascape with ?
Thanks for answering all my questions by the way.

 

[sgrosenb]

Zero cycle. No ammonia spike, despite some of the rock looking a bit sludgy the first two days. No algae bloom either, which surprised me. I could drop fish right into the tank and they'd be fine I think - if the LFS were still open here. Maybe I'll order online.



Depends upon what you mean by bad, but not too many:

• There are a lot of predatory snails (whelks) that I've been fishing out. They're easy to spot, and easy to remove with tongs. I'm just exiling them to my first sump chamber.
• I have seen a number of crabs, including at least one gorilla crab. All of them are very small though (like 1 cm across) and since my tank doesn't have fish yet, I'm going to take my time to trap them.
• I've seen a single aeolid nudi. It's very small, white, with cerata on its back. It probably eats something in the tank right now (probably hydroids) but I'm not in a hurry to eliminate it because I haven't introduced any coral to the tank (other than the few bits which came in on the rocks of course).

Could you explain briefly what your tactic is to trap the crabs? I already have fish so I'd like to get them trapped as soon as possible. Thanks!

 

[eschaton]

Is it fairly porous and was it a pain to aquascape with ?

I would say it's medium porosity. Rock feels heavy/dense, and there are a fair number of holes, big and small. There are a whole lot of dead barnacles on the rock - which appear to have died a long time ago, not recently, meaning there's small semi-open water cavities all along the outside of the rock.

It was kinda a pain to aquascape. Most of the rocks are blocky/bouldery, and they are all around the same size. They varied in terms of how much encrusting life they had. Some were pretty plain, others had tons of macros, sponges, tunicates, hydroids, bryzoans, a few coral polyps, etc. Honestly scaping with these rocks is harder, because you have to ensure the "up" in the ocean remains "up" in your tank. Or at least sideways.

Could you explain briefly what your tactic is to trap the crabs? I already have fish so I'd like to get them trapped as soon as possible. Thanks!

Haven't done it yet, but planning on a simple trap with a glass and some bait. If that doesn't work I might build one with a water bottle.

 

[LOVEROCK]

ROCKS INCOMING TOMMROW .. paid for overnight ups ... killed me .. afraid of air ports !

 

[eschaton]

ROCKS INCOMING TOMMROW .. paid for overnight ups ... killed me .. afraid of air ports !

Just as a note, I'm finding the hermits that came in on my rock are not 100% reef safe. I don't think they munch coral, but one of them has taken a strange liking to eating sponges, mostly wiping out one over the last several days. It was kinda an ugly black sponge, so I'm not broken up about it, but still.

 

[LOVEROCK]

any more news ? my Ammomia is sky high from ovvernight.. waiting to cycle, have you started trapping gorilla crabs

 

[eschaton]

any more news ? my Ammomia is sky high from ovvernight.. waiting to cycle, have you started trapping gorilla crabs

I never had any sort of ammonia spike at all. However, a few days ago, I started to get a minor diatom bloom. The tank is at a weird place now, because there are patches of diatoms, little tufts of GHA, and rapidly growing macro all at the same time. At this point I don't think I have much choice other than to let it be and wait for the coraline to win out. Honestly it doesn't look that bad though.

As to the crabs, so far I've captured three of them, though there are more to go. One of the largest gorilla crabs has grabbed, killed, and eaten two snails while I have been watching him, so he's my top priority to capture. It seems the most problematic ones are the crabs with the huge claws. There's a number of other smaller crabs which just seem to pick at things similar to the hermits/decorator crabs, but they don't seem outwardly predatory (and they're much easier to grab anyway).

I'll try and post some new pictures tonight.

 

[eschaton]

Okay, photos:

FTS. You can see there's more gunk here and thee, and a lot of feather caulerpa has sprung up on one of the rocks.

Top rock shows the wide variety of macros - red, brown, and green. Along with some featherdusters.

I have no idea what these white things are. At first I thought they were sponges, because they looked like little white tubes. But they grew very fast and became spindly.

The rock flower anemone keeps moving slowly around his rock. I think he'll end up in back where I can't see him soon, which will be a PITA for feeding.

Tufts of GHA forming on this rock.

Sandbed showing a mixture of diatoms, GHA, and red macros growing directly on the sand.

One of the crabs I haven't been able to get yet. More of a small one. This was just after lights went on and most of the motile inverts were still hiding.

 

[User1]

White thing is a flower anemone. Very nice addition and pretty.

 

[RMS18]

I ordered from KP and had a good experience. Gets $$$ however.

 

[vangvace]

You need the red light. At night, when all lights are off you turn the red light and you will amazed with how much life is in your tank.

If you haven't done this yet, I would highly recommend it. Especially an hour or two after the tank and ambient lights are off. While you see some pods and stuff during the day, they seem or are much more active at night when things are "safer" on the reef. It is crazy cool.

 

[eschaton]

Found a new friend today:

It's one tiny effin urchin for sure. Body is no bigger than an eraser nub. It must have been hiding away inside of a cavity for the past few weeks. It has all black coloration, but it does not not appear to be a diadema urchin - it has longer, thicker spines pointed out to the sides, and short sharp spines on the top of its body.

Managed to remove another crab today. I'm slowly getting them all out.

 

[hoju74]

Found a new friend today:

It's one tiny effin urchin for sure. Body is no bigger than an eraser nub. It must have been hiding away inside of a cavity for the past few weeks. It has all black coloration, but it does not not appear to be a diadema urchin - it has longer, thicker spines pointed out to the sides, and short sharp spines on the top of its body.

Managed to remove another crab today. I'm slowly getting them all out.

Are you still happy with this rock despite the bad hitchhikers and the rock being tough to aquascape with ?

 

[ryshark]

I ordered from KP and had a good experience. Gets $$$ however.

I went with KP Aquatics too. Maybe I got lucky but out of 50 lbs of rock I got 0 crabs and 0 mantis. Well there was one dead mantis at the bottom of the cooler, but that was it. I think I do have a fireworm though, so that would be my only bad hitchhiker. What did survive is urchins, brittle stars, sponges, tunicates, pods and coraline algae. Another benefit of KP is no aiptasia.

 

[eschaton]

Are you still happy with this rock despite the bad hitchhikers and the rock being tough to aquascape with ?

So far, so good. I haven't really introduced much in terms of life yet that wasn't on the rocks - just a set of biodiversity-boosting stuff from Indo-Pacific Sea Farms.

In terms of "bad behavior" I've seen:

• The gorilla crabs catch and eat small snails twice. Honestly they were not the cool mini-strombus that I want to keep, but the littorinid grazers that IPSF included as freebies in my order, so as of yet I'm not heatbroken.
• Some of the hermits are kinda badly behaved, grazing on some of the sponges and tunicates. The only sponge they managed to kill was an ugly black one, and might have been dying, and the tunicates have recovered. Basically I just move one whenever I see it paying too close attention to something I want to keep, and it seems to work out okay.
• Just tonight I saw a snail I thought was harmless (looks kinda like a trochus, but smaller, with a reddish shell/body) start trying to graze on the freebie toadstool IPSF included in my order. I decided to pick him up off the rock and move him elsewhere.
• All of the big whelks have been moved into my sump's first chamber. I wish I had thought it through more though, because unlike the crabs they can manage to traverse throughout the sump with ease, meaning they've gotten into my fuge. They aren't really capable of eating pods though, so I don't think they're doing that much damage to the effectiveness of the fuge. There still are some tiny whelks (like the size of a rice grain) in the display tank, but they don't seem to do much damage, so I'm not in a hurry to relocate them.

Basically if I can get out the gorilla crabs I'm going to be all set. The other types of crabs (including the decorator crabs) tend to be kinda "picky" on the rocks but they don't seem to actively stalk prey the same way.

As to the aquascaping - it was kinda a PITA, and I still futz with a rock or two, but I think I've gotten used to my scape now.

I'm bored with isolation, and decided to make a small online order of a few easy corals and three fish to add to the tank. Should get here on Wednesday. Hopefully it works out.

 

[2Wheelsonly]

Ugh. No thanks. I don't want fake dyed purple rock without encrusting life forms. That's the exact polar opposite of what I'm looking for.



I don't just want it for the bacteria. I want it for the freebies like sponges, tunicates, macros, etc. I love the "ecosystem in a tank" aspect of reefing.

If you are doing it right you shouldn't see the rock in a year, buy what works and spend money on the corals.

 

[eschaton]

If you are doing it right you shouldn't see the rock in a year, buy what works and spend money on the corals.

Different strokes for different folks. I get so much joy every morning waking up and seeing what odd new lifeform has crawled out of a hole I hadn't seen before. Having a tank that had nothing in it I didn't consciously introduce would just be so boring to me.