Advice for a newbie with a marine tank

Martmanicus · #1 03-21-2009, 12:53 AM

Yeah thanks Mark. That definitely helps. I think what I'll do is take out all the live rock and do as you say. Try to get the crabs and mantis out of there and then rebuild my structure. I'm glad that this happened now I guess before I get any fish in there.

I had setup my live rock on the glass and then put the sand in afterwards. I read that was the best way to do it to avoid pockets of trapped sand under live rocks. But now when I rebuild the rocks are just going to be ontop of the live sand. Is this a problem?

digital-audiophile · #2 03-21-2009, 12:58 AM

We should ask... what kind of crabs?

365seasons · #3 03-21-2009, 01:29 AM

My husband and I are fairly new to the marine scene as well, but had the same problem with a hitchhiker crab.

We did a lot of research on if it was good or bad, and with help from a lot of people on this site (gotta love that!), we found out that our hitchhiker crab, was indeed, very bad.

This site can possibly help you ID him

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/reefs/guami...dae/index.html

We were told to prop a glass up against the rock, and place a shrimp (cocktail, or raw) in the bottom of it. Do this when all of the lights are out, and the crab should fall in to get the shrimp and not be able to get back out.

As well, the owner of a LFS (Ocean City) here told us to place a shrimp in the middle of the tank, turn the lights out, and when the crab comes out, to shine a flashlight on it (which supposedly immobilizes them), making it easy to fish it out.

Hopefully that will help, and then you can put them in your sump, or do with them as you wish.

reeferious · #4 03-21-2009, 01:42 AM

easiest way to coax your shrimp out would be to dunk that rock into clubsoda, i'll bet you that shrimp would fly out of his hidey hole and this way you wont have to soak your rock too long as in dunking into pure fresh water. save you all those life on liverock.

Martmanicus · #5 03-21-2009, 02:18 AM

I found a great reference site for just this thing
http://ozreef.org/library/articles/mantis_shrimp.html

Wow you know he's attacking every snail in site. I moved a bunch of snails off that piece of rock and yet I can still here him every minute or so whacking something else. Violent little buggers. Yeah I read that club soda is some kind of awful for them.

I don't want to kill him but I"m afraid I don't have much choice as I don't have a sump and I'm sure nobody wants to come pick up a homicidal mantis from downtown Vancouver

I don't know what type of crabs they are. It's Indonesian rock appearantly. The crabs are also hiding out in a bunch of holes. I piked several pieces of live rock that are riddled with caves thinking they looked interesting. After reading about mantis shrimp I think that all the caves have been dug out by them. Hopefully there is only one of them in my tank.

So after I'm done I'm just going to rebuild my aquascape ontop of the sand. Is this a bad idea? I don't want to disturb the sand too much as it took quite awhile for the cloudyness to go away and I can't drain my tank this time.

landshark · #6 03-21-2009, 02:48 AM

When I build my structures, I lay down small pieces of flat live rock or plastic as a makeshift footing for the bigger pieces. I try to use pieces that are same or slightly shorter than the height of your sand, (while laying directly on the glass bottom). This supports the first layer of your liverock at the height of your sand. This allows any sand sifting or burrowing fish or critters to easily tunnel under the rock and not disturb the supports that are holding up your display. I've never had any problems doing this and it is easy to do with sand allready in the tank.