soooooooooo wtf is this? and why does it creep me out
 

living under my green cap coral (for now)
the red and white arms.

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n...1/24b3bee7.jpg

tiny brittle star, they're cool. Detritus eaters, and coral safe.

That'd be a mini brittle star and it creeps you because you need to leather up, buttercup. Just kidding, there's a lot in my tank that creeps me out too. The mini brittle stars are super cool and harmless detritus eaters. If you can corner one you can pick it up and check it out. Neat little guys. I literally just had one in my hand a moment ago.

okay, now im happy, i though it was like some 3 headed bristle worm from hell or something.
haha. im okay with brittle stars. not as creepy.

It's amazing how much a little research can alleviate alot of the initial creepyness in this hobby.

When I added some mature live rock to my tank from a friends, one of the rocks was crawling with these guys, and the first time I fed the tank they all started crawling out waving their arms about... definitely creeped me out.

In fact, it still kinda creeps me out...

I love those guys, I rescue a bunch every few days when I toss out my filter floss and they've ended up there.

Not trying to hijack your thread, but want to talk about creepy, other day i had my hand in my tank moving something and I looked up to talk to my wife for a minute and I felt something on my hand, looked back and there was a 3-4 inch crab I had never seen before crawling onto my hand. As girly as this sounds I am still not a fan of putting my hand into the tank haha. However I did manage to coax it out with a piece of shrimp and then kill it with a skewer!

It is always weird when you see something in your tank you never have before.

hahaha, that was kinda mean, feel free to hijack thread with stories & pics.
yeah id be surprised was hiding in those rocks. they dont call them live for nothing haha.
i got a mantis shrimp in there i saw when i first added the rock, bearly a inch big, but every now and then like right now i hear it clickin as it hits something, so far no inverts have been killed and it hasnt shown it self in over a month.

oh man! i would have absolutely put that crab into my tank!
aw well, next time i guess

yeah, never kill always FF :wink:

He was going through my snails, corals and occasional fish like it was going out of style, I tried to grab him with prongs twice and once ripped off 2 legs and he was still fine, only option I had left before he did any more damage was to skewer him.

should have ate him haha.. he did eat all your hardwork.

So I did a 20% water change today and it apparently signified a fiesta celebration for the micro brittles in my tank. Check out all the arms in the picture. There were some riding the polyps of the various corals in my tank too, it was hilarious. The picture doesn't really do it justice, usually you can only see maybe 30-50 out and today it was in the hundreds easily.

http://i.imgur.com/3NnN4l.jpg

5 years ago I lost my mind the first time i saw an amphipod at night, then i was convinced my isopods were going to eat all the fish and corals in my tank, then some orange coraline started growing and i was sure it was orange death... one thing i have learned looking at fish tanks is relaxing, owning them is NOT.

Biggest thing is to just chill because it will all balance out eventually, throwing money at a problem might speed up the fix, but overall time is what fixes all in the reef tank.

well another lovely creepy thing, glad i spotted this one.
just grab a green shroom from J&L, got home, pulled it out of the bag and looked in the bag, what i thought was a long piece of poo or something turned out to be a Syllidae
( http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=1827924 )
must of been feeding on the shroom. good thing it fell off.

thank god for the internet. say hello to the toliet long creepy friend.