[robbyville]

Hello all,

I thought I'd post a long one, a giggle for all to enjoy.

As some of you may know, karma has come back to plague me. Or more truthfully, plague my tank. After patting myself on the back for gosh knows how long in regards to my Aptaisia control, I have now been over-run. I've tried practically everything except for Berghia Nudibranches (Still trying to source), and a CBB due to tank size restrictions. The best overall was when I placed two small shrimp in the tank only to have them eaten in under 30 seconds by my Blennie and Flame Hawk. NB, I spent three hours acclimating the shrimp buffet.

Well, last week I set up the QT tank, bought two more shrimp from J&L's, put them in the QT and started to rotate rock into that tank for them to feast on. With only a diet of aptaisia to enjoy they were doing a great job of cleaning up.

But my goal was really to place the Flame and Blennie in the QT for a few weeks and have the shrimp in the main tank since Aptaisia are EVERYWHERE. Plus a lot of my rock have corals attached and my lighting for the QT would not sustain corals.

So yesterday I decided enough was enough, the fishies were going to have to move. Blennies are fast, and smart, apparently a heck of a lot smarter than I am. After 2 plus hours of trying to entice him I started to pull rock. With half the rock in the QT tank, I spent another 2 hours trying to catch "Shaq", still no go. Next thing I know I've placed about 70lbs of rock into a 27 gal tank, with another 30 lbs or so in buckets. My water is gross from all the chasing, and all I have in the main tank is one stupid rock with an anemone and a clutch of clownfish eggs which Sid and Nancy are protecting like there's no tomorrow! Still I can't get this stupid fish! Finally I net him and place him in a bowl, and start to re-scape the main tank, well actually my wife did this and there was so much chemical warfare going on that I'm pretty sure she got ill from all the time in the tank.

So I put the two fish into the Qt tank forgetting that I haven't even bagged up the shrimp yet. You know where this is going, to make a short story long... Shaq, swoops in and eats one of the shrimp, I had to laugh at that point. Luckily for me the other shrimp was cowering in fear, I was able to get him out and into the main tank. Hopefully we can get another shrimp with a taste for aptaisia and they can clean up the site. In the meantime, Shaq and "Eyeball" are chilling in jail. At this point I feel no sympathy for Shaq, but I hate seeing eyeball without his friends...Maybe I'll see if I can put him back in...NOT!

Yeesh,

Rob