[Martmanicus]

Hi,

I recently decided that I wanted a reef tank in my apartment. I've never owned any aquarium but for some reason fresh water just doesn't have any interest for me... on the other hand I've always been facinated by salt water reefs.

Anyways I've purchased a Red Sea Max 250 aquarium (65 gallons), 60 pounds of cured live rock and 40 pounds of live sand. I'm in the process of cycling the tank and I'm on my second algae bloom. I've purchased half of a clean up crew and everything appeared to be going swimmingly. Well I guess it still is going swimmingly. So much so that things have started to come out of my live rock. I've seen a small sea cucumber, two crabs and now what appears to be a small mantis shrimp !?!? I'm concerned because I haven't handled these hitchhikers very well.

The sea cucumber I picked up when I saw him because I thought that surely it must be dead. Well it wasn't... it squirted and I was so surprised I dropped it. The problem is that I was in the process of putting my live sand in the tank so it was so cloudy I couldn't find him again. My concern is that he was buried and he's probably dead now. I've sifted for him but damned if I could find him. What I'm wondering is how much of a problem is it going to be with him decaying in the tank (if he's dead)? Will it be a phosphate factory for months to come or will it only be a few weeks?

The next hitchhiker problem. Crabs. How much of a problem are these guys? I heard that I was supposed to get them off the live rock and I did do a visual inspection but the rock had lots of holes to hide in. Do I need to worry about them? Is there anyway to get rid of them without tearing down the whole tank?

The last hitchhiker. A shrimp... Oh My God I was so surprised. I just saw him like 5 minutes ago sneaking out of a hole. He was pretty ****ed off at this big snail I got and he proceeded to whack a barnicle off of this snail like I've seen Mantis shrimps do on youtube. My question is whether only Mantis shrimps do that whacking thing and whether this is going to cause problems for my snails and fish down the line? The shrimp is only about an inch long right now.

Any advice you guys have is appreciated. I'll see if I can snap a picture of the shrimp.

Thanks,
Martin