I knew someone would say something about the GHA. I don't mind it but I would normally have done a 'harvest' when I cleaned the glass (which I did today) before taking pics.
When I was on the phone with whoever it was that sold my mom this livestock, I originally wanted a couple different kinds of snails... something that would take care of filamentous algae on the rocks, diatoms and film algae on the glass. They didn't have any snails, but did have emerald crabs... good choice, really, he's interesting and he eats the GHA (which is really only a minor problem), but his carapace is only the size of a nickel. A tiny crab like that can only eat so much algae, though I did watch him clear around 1/3 of the smaller rock island yesterday. I also fed mysis in an attempt to get the Royal Gramma interested in checking out his surroundings, instead of hiding in the back of the larger island (he ate a few pieces
very encouraging)... I noted the emerald chowing on some leftovers, then he crawled into the island and I haven't seen him since. Hope he's okay...
And they had urchins at Bayside, but I decided I didn't want one and chose the crab instead. He'll get to it soon enough, I'm sure... I don't want the GHA gone, just controlled. It's a natural part of my system and I do like it, there's just too much of it.