afgun Posted March 26, 2011 Author Share Posted March 26, 2011 We believe that the hitchhiker is a red mithrax crab; we (I) took a chance and put him in the tank today. He isn't very happy right now, having been relegated to the sump for several days. Our NO2 hit zero today, indicating hopefully that our second bacterial colony is fully established. NO3 has been in the 20-40 range for almost 3 days (we controlled it before then with some water changes) and it's solidly at 20 now, so hopefully the third bacterial colony is on its way to taking hold as well. We rockscaped a couple of days ago too. Here's the results: Unfortunately, a large portion of the sponges that were on the rock have died off; we understand that's fairly normal, but we're still sad about it. So we're looking forward to the second half of the rock and cleanup crew to arrive now. The auto-topoff is working perfectly, and the semi-automated water change (hey, at least no buckets!) enabled a couple days of 50+ gallon changes as nitrates spiked. Time to fire up the skimmer, I think... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
afgun Posted March 28, 2011 Author Share Posted March 28, 2011 Quick update as I'm still beat from a late night... but the second part of our TBS "package" arrived yesterday evening, and we worked for 3 1/2 hours to clean the rock and get everything situated. We did a rough placement of where we want the rocks, but we haven't aquascaped everything yet. Anyways, here's a FTS from last night: And L/M/R closeups: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robb in Austin Posted March 28, 2011 Share Posted March 28, 2011 Nice pick ups! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
afgun Posted March 28, 2011 Author Share Posted March 28, 2011 Thanks, Robb. We wound up getting 2 brittle stars, 2 serpent stars, 4 bubble tip anemones, 4 other anemones (carpet?), a big honkin' starfish, a ton of hermit crabs and snails, a kickass decorator crab, several fans and sponges, 4 shrimp, a tiny fish of some sort, and a bunch more sweet live rock. On tap for today is a water change to bring nitrates down. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
afgun Posted April 10, 2011 Author Share Posted April 10, 2011 Update time... the BTAs are really Condis, and the 4 "other" anemones appear to be flower anemones. My wife posted some pictures to RC awhile back, and here they are: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
afgun Posted April 10, 2011 Author Share Posted April 10, 2011 Here's a FTS and an interesting crab that TBS put in the order for us I bought some CFL floods and hooked them up over the refugium. We tossed in some halimeda and chaeto that we got from RCA and a couple of bottles of tigger pods. The fuge is currently home to a couple of gorilla crabs that we found (unfortunately the rest are playing hard-to-get). Several snails have made the trip down the overflow and are also in the fuge now. Ones I find in the sump get forcibly relocated back to the tank but I leave anything in the fuge. A couple of days ago we found THIS bugger (he's an inch and a half to two inches across!) had hitchhiked in with the rock somewhere: Our attempts to corral him have not gone the way we hoped. At least his claws appear to be blunt... Things have started to settle in nicely, and we even have what appears to be a lot of snail eggs recently laid. Unfortunately, the condis for the most part haven't really found a place that they like yet, and have been quite mobile. One got sucked into the closed loop intake the other day. I thought that the multitude of small (1/4") holes would prevent that, but it seems that the suction was enough that it got pulled in. I also pulled several small hermit crabs from the holes. Not sure if they were happy to be removed or not, but at least they're free. Water parameters have been pretty stable; ammonia is at 0, nitrites are at 0 and nitrates slowly creep up until we do a water change when it hits 80 or so. Since things seem to have settled down, we picked up a few fish and some frags yesterday: That's a bar goby, and 3 of our 7 blue chromis. We also bought a coral beauty, but it is quite shy and it darts back into the rockwork when I am aiming the camera towards the tank. We're still aquascaping, so no recent FTS, but we finally have our reef! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robb in Austin Posted April 11, 2011 Share Posted April 11, 2011 That latest crab looks like an emerald to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
afgun Posted April 13, 2011 Author Share Posted April 13, 2011 Yesterday we could only find 5 of our 7 new chromis. Today, only 4 are visible. Something is taking them out... And, after noticing the "big boy" crab smashing a gorgonian today, we decided that he had to go. I successfully tempted him with a bit of shrimp from our freezer and was able to grab it and relocate him to the refugium. Anybody interested in a 1.5" red mithrax crab for free? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fishypets Posted April 13, 2011 Share Posted April 13, 2011 Great looking tank! Love the sponges too. And speaking of sponges you should look into a ZEOvit product called Spong Power... It makes the sponges grow like mad and will even grow new ones you don't already have. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
afgun Posted April 27, 2011 Author Share Posted April 27, 2011 (edited) Unfortunately, we seem to have luck only keeping one of a kind of each fish... we are down to only 1 chromis now, and one of our 2 recently-purchased firefish vanished as well. We have a few pistol shrimp (or mantis... hoping not) in the tank as we hear the occasional popping, but I don't know if that's what's happening to the fish. We bought some suspect frags (really rolled the dice, as they were in the "cheap" tank at the LFS) and 2 out of 3 bit the dust. The bigger colonies that we purchased are doing well. And a blue starfish didn't adapt well to the tank and perished. One of our sponges appears to be dying, so we're going to cut off the bad parts tonight. Otherwise, the tank seems to be healthy. We need to do some re-rock-scaping when I can get help moving the canopy off. Several fish, snails and crabs have surfed the plumbing down to the sump, so I bought some gutter guard for the weir; I'll be attaching it when we do the rockscaping. Overall, though, we're quite pleased with how things are working out. Tank parameters are stable and until we get a really good colony of nitrifying bacteria in the DSB we're managing nitrates through water changes. 40 isn't bad, right? Edited April 27, 2011 by afgun Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesL Posted April 27, 2011 Share Posted April 27, 2011 I have the same problem with multiple fish. I try buying them in pairs (or more when applicable), and normally end up with one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
afgun Posted May 13, 2011 Author Share Posted May 13, 2011 The other firefish disappeared yesterday. ARGH. We have put up some gutterguard to prevent fish from going over the weir, so something in the tank must have gotten it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
afgun Posted May 16, 2011 Author Share Posted May 16, 2011 Aaaand the zebra-striped bar goby decided to carpet surf Friday night. @#%#% So we did some rockscaping yesterday. Many of the pieces that we got from TBS were simply huge, so we transferred them to a bucket of SW and I took them out to the driveway where I had laid down some plastic. I had my trusty 4 lb sledge and a chisel ready, and carved them into smaller pieces. Look what came out of some of the rocks that I broke apart There were also numerous tiny pistol shrimp that we recovered. They went back in the tank. We still hear a lot of regular clicking, so we're not sure but think that we still have some mantis in the tank. That certainly would explain the disappearing fish. Although carpet surfers with cats in the house are also still not out of the realm of possibilities. Anyways, here's the tank after aquascaping and adding some new fish and an anemone this weekend... looks much better in my opinion, and my wife and I didn't fight *too* much while doing it, either Thanks for following along... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesL Posted May 16, 2011 Share Posted May 16, 2011 Those are some serious shrimps! A couple do look like mantis, and a few look like pistols (hard to tell from the pics). It is amazing they all staying on their back like that for the picture. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
afgun Posted May 16, 2011 Author Share Posted May 16, 2011 They're quite dead in that picture, having been sitting out of water for an hour or so in the sun. They are indeed all mantis. The pistols that we found are tiny, on the order of 1cm or so in length. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesL Posted May 17, 2011 Share Posted May 17, 2011 They're quite dead in that picture, having been sitting out of water for an hour or so in the sun. They are indeed all mantis. The pistols that we found are tiny, on the order of 1cm or so in length. That would explain the stillness Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robb in Austin Posted May 17, 2011 Share Posted May 17, 2011 ...having been sitting out of water for an hour or so in the sun... Shrimp on the barbie Texas style? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
afgun Posted May 17, 2011 Author Share Posted May 17, 2011 ...having been sitting out of water for an hour or so in the sun... Shrimp on the barbie Texas style? Apparently! ;-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
afgun Posted May 28, 2011 Author Share Posted May 28, 2011 Last weekend we couldn't find the Christmas wrasse that we bought 2 weeks prior. I had to go out of town this week... my wife told me that one of the bangai cardinals died while I was gone and this evening when I was feeding the tank, I noticed that our new zebra striped bar goby went carpet surfing, just like the last one. ARGH! Tank parameters look fine, so I don't know what we're doing wrong. The only thing I can think of is that we must have more mantis shrimp and they're doing in or scaring away the other residents... any tips on predators that eat mantis, or how I can lure them out of the rocks to a trap without having to dismantle all of the rock work? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atxmandarin Posted May 28, 2011 Share Posted May 28, 2011 those are all mantis shrimp for sure, shouldnt have killed them though, pricey shrimp right there, coulda helped restock your fish, anyway, where the heck did you get your rock from??? that is what happened to your fish most likely, ive never heard of so many ending up in one tank, stay on the lookout for more Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
afgun Posted May 28, 2011 Author Share Posted May 28, 2011 Tampa Bay Saltwater. Unfortunately aquacultured live rock can bring any kind of hitchhikers I found another mantis today roaming about the rock near the top. By the time I grabbed a bucket and started pulling rocks out of the tank, though, he had retreated deeper into the stack and I couldn't find him - and didn't feel like tearing the whole thing apart. I guess we'll have to learn to live with it or be very wary and prepared to pounce when we see them again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
atxmandarin Posted May 28, 2011 Share Posted May 28, 2011 o believe me i know all about hitchhikers, just never a traveling group of them haha, yours are apparently colonized in that rock Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
afgun Posted August 10, 2011 Author Share Posted August 10, 2011 We still have 1 or 2 mantis in the tank along with a couple of monster crabs that we'd like to get out. They've killed off so much livestock that we are very hesitant about putting anything else in the tank before we capture them. Yesterday we saw one of the mantis scooting about under a rock at the top of the tank, so we pulled it out and I took it to the garage. Unfortunately he slipped away in the dash to pull it and is still in the tank. Anyone with successful stories on how to catch a mantis? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Lamont Posted August 10, 2011 Share Posted August 10, 2011 I will help you take out the live rock to catch the predators and then help re stack the rock. It should not take that long with a few people working together. Just let me know. Lamont Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dshel1217 Posted August 11, 2011 Share Posted August 11, 2011 We still have 1 or 2 mantis in the tank along with a couple of monster crabs that we'd like to get out. They've killed off so much livestock that we are very hesitant about putting anything else in the tank before we capture them. Yesterday we saw one of the mantis scooting about under a rock at the top of the tank, so we pulled it out and I took it to the garage. Unfortunately he slipped away in the dash to pull it and is still in the tank. Anyone with successful stories on how to catch a mantis? I feel your pain, still trying to catch my tank killer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.