RuralReef 2.1

[BlueAbyss]

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.

[BlueAbyss]

Alright, so I moved stuff around in my Photobucket and now all my images are broken. Hrm... I'll get to that. Anyhow, FTS after the algae harvest...


A shot of the blue legged hermit... he's changed shells again.


And a shot of the emerald. I probably took 50 pics of him while I could see him, and a few of them turned out really nice...


And a shot of the setup as a whole, before the algae harvest yesterday...


Thanks for looking

[Snaz]

Crabs are so cool, I will watch them for hours given the chance. Harry the emerald crab went MIA a couple of months back and I suspect a Xanthid crab I see occasionally that I am too lazy to evict.

[lastlight]

love how you have the rock balanced. amano reef style!

[BlueAbyss]

Yeah I really like the crab. He's super cool and fun to watch. Nameless as yet, but I'm sure someone will name him eventually. Mr. Crabs is already taken up by the hermit

That rock is truly balanced... it has a pivot point. It is also the home of all my livestock, so I have to be very careful when I have my hands in the tank since I don't want it to pivot and crush someone. But it does look very good, IMO... that's good, since there was a time when I was going to smash that rock into smaller pieces. The urge has subsided, I'm happy with the rockwork (however little of it there is). Glad others like it too

[BlueAbyss]

So looking very closely, I notice that what I thought were single strands of algae are actually branched like a foxtail... in other words, I have Bryopsis (and have had since the beginning). I started dosing calcium and magnesium this week (not the Kent brand though), I will also continue with physical removal. Hopefully I notice some improvement in the next couple weeks... the tank is no where near mature yet, and the infestation is localized to my rockwork. Time will tell.

I also have discovered a (1) flatworm hitchhiker on my Paly frag. I'm not worried about him yet, but if it turns out he has a bunch of friends... well, I guess I'll have to get some Flatworm Exit. I was unable to siphon the one I saw.

Hmm, so the first bad news in my tank. Not really such bad news (since neither pests are really making nuisances of themselves), but I'm hoping things don't get out of hand.

[BlueAbyss]

Second bad news... everything looked fine at 10 am... by noon my Royal Gramma was dead. Upon inspecting his body, I found his damaged eye sunken in and a lot of damage on that side of his face... really, I think this is what killed him. It looked like some pretty extensive abrasion, I'm surprised he was able to eat at all while he was alive.

I'll be phoning Bayside Corals today to ask them nicely to remember to tape the corners of the bags when they package their livestock. My fish would likely have lived if he hadn't stuffed himself into the bag corner for the 11 hours he was in a bag.

I'll be doing a round of tests to make sure it wasn't a parameter off. Everything else looks fine though, coral and both crabs are fine... we'll see what the tests say.