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ReyDeFarts

ReyDeFarts

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I recently acquired some live rock and have noticed quite a few living things! A few are familiar and a few others I've had to search and figure out. This one though, I'm not able to get a good view or picture to try and Google search. Need some help please. I know it's not a good picture. So far, I've seen two different ones. I believe they are a crab.
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I also found a type of tube worm. Not the feather duster next to it. Initially, the Google search said Christmas Tree worm, but I also saw Serpulid worm. Any ideas?
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Another find today was a pistol shrimp. Not sure how I feel about that. I thought they are not reef safe. Anyone else have them in their reef tank? Thoughts.
 
Yeah that's a bad crab, we even tried feeding one to @under_water_ninja 's puffer fish, but it was too big and now he's got that jerk living in his main tank.

If you can pull that rock out and soak it in some freshwater in there to get it out, I'd do so now. I tried keeping it in my sump and it climbed out, bleh.

The other two are worms, totally reef safe and pretty desirable. They eat fish poo, food particles, phyto, etc. First one might actually be a Christmas tree worm. You can keep that rock separate for putting encrusting corals like porites, montipora, or cyphastrea to grow around it to mimic their natural habitat.
 
Darkxerox said:
Yeah that's a bad crab, we even tried feeding one to @under_water_ninja 's puffer fish, but it was too big and now he's got that jerk living in his main tank.

If you can pull that rock out and soak it in some freshwater in there to get it out, I'd do so now. I tried keeping it in my sump and it climbed out, bleh.

The other two are worms, totally reef safe and pretty desirable. They eat fish poo, food particles, phyto, etc. First one might actually be a Christmas tree worm. You can keep that rock separate for putting encrusting corals like porites, montipora, or cyphastrea to grow around it to mimic their natural habitat.
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Thanks for the confirmation. I appreciate it. Unfortunately, those rocks are all connected with those worms. I will try and soak just the bottom sections. I'll do it tonight.
 
One of the Xanthid family crabs commonly called gorilla crabs. Given you have nothing in there right now, just try to catch it at your leisure over the next few weeks. Everything else you posted is fine to keep in there.
 
Darkxerox said:
One of the Xanthid family crabs commonly called gorilla crabs. Given you have nothing in there right now, just try to catch it at your leisure over the next few weeks. Everything else you posted is fine to keep in there.
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Or stab it in the face of its stuck in a hole!
Not normally going to advocate for hurting animals, but that one you want to remove, by any means necessary
 
Coral reefer said:
Or stab it in the face of its stuck in a hole!
Not normally going to advocate for hurting animals, but that one you want to remove, by any means necessary
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Got a positive ID...pulled the rock out and was able to pull this one. Definitely Gorilla crab from all the image searches I tried, including positive IDs here.
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I couldn't get the other one out. Stabbed the ever living $h¡+ out of the tunnels where the other one was located. Unlikely it survived the onslaught. I saw no choice but to do that. If you all tell me their bad, then I want them out! I trust your judgment and guidance, so thank you.

Also...got a bit more bad news. I am fairly certain I was incorrect in my shrimp species ID. I do believe it is a small mantis shrimp. Bulgy eyes and tucked in front legs. Saw it for only a few seconds yesterday, but could not find it either. Currently, I have the bottle trap with some krill shrimp in for bait. I really see why so many start from scratch with dry rock. The "instant" cycle has its benefits. No doubt about it. But at the expense of hitchhiking pests.
 
ReyDeFarts said:
Got a positive ID...pulled the rock out and was able to pull this one. Definitely Gorilla crab from all the image searches I tried, including positive IDs here.
View attachment 51366
I couldn't get the other one out. Stabbed the ever living $h¡+ out of the tunnels where the other one was located. Unlikely it survived the onslaught. I saw no choice but to do that. If you all tell me their bad, then I want them out! I trust your judgment and guidance, so thank you.

Also...got a bit more bad news. I am fairly certain I was incorrect in my shrimp species ID. I do believe it is a small mantis shrimp. Bulgy eyes and tucked in front legs. Saw it for only a few seconds yesterday, but could not find it either. Currently, I have the bottle trap with some krill shrimp in for bait. I really see why so many start from scratch with dry rock. The "instant" cycle has its benefits. No doubt about it. But at the expense of hitchhiking pests.
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After starting many tanks, I'm all for taking the time to deal with the bad that comes with live rock rather than starting a tank dry. Just need to have patience and learn to deal with the pests. In the end you'll end up with a much more stable well established tank and more reefing knowledge too.
 
Wouldn't the middle ground be put live rock on the sump? Not like a crab or mantis is going to make it into the display, and bacteria can work just as well down there and can travel through the water column.
 
Arvin R said:
After starting many tanks, I'm all for taking the time to deal with the bad that comes with live rock rather than starting a tank dry. Just need to have patience and learn to deal with the pests. In the end you'll end up with a much more stable well established tank and more reefing knowledge too.
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I appreciate the encouragement of going this route. The rocks are beautiful and full of so much good life, it is indeed more enjoyable looking at the existing life, versus the inevitable waiting period of trying to get dry rock to mature. At least I can only imagine as I've never done that. Every day right now is all brand new territory for me! I'm glad I sought guidance regarding the crabs honestly. My ignorance would have had me giving them names and thinking they were good.
Darkxerox said:
It's how we did it in the old days and honestly is 1000x better than dealing with dinoflagellates etc. You can euthanize by putting it in the freezer.
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Knowing that their is life in there, tells me that my parameters are somewhat stable and good enough to add some goodies. I certainly hope I don't have to deal with dinos. I've added a bunch of copepods and I'm feeding phytoplankton every day to try and boost their population. I'm sure I may still have to deal with an ugly stage, but I'm hopeful that I can keep it under control with the pods. We shall see.
 
richiev said:
Wouldn't the middle ground be put live rock on the sump? Not like a crab or mantis is going to make it into the display, and bacteria can work just as well down there and can travel through the water column.
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You know...you make a good point though. I do have a lot of rubble rocks and could break up some of the smaller rocks to make rubble. Then add them into a filter bag and through it into one of the chambers. Would certainly add more surface area for the bacteria and boost my system. Right?! Would it be a decent place for pods to live as well?
 
ReyDeFarts said:
You know...you make a good point though. I do have a lot of rubble rocks and could break up some of the smaller rocks to make rubble. Then add them into a filter bag and through it into one of the chambers. Would certainly add more surface area for the bacteria and boost my system. Right?! Would it be a decent place for pods to live as well?
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That's what I did in my AIO, though I bought a multi level media rack for it first. Mechanical filtration on top, rocks below. Otherwise it gets to be a big hot mess of detritus.
 
richiev said:
That's what I did in my AIO, though I bought a multi level media rack for it first. Mechanical filtration on top, rocks below. Otherwise it gets to be a big hot mess of detritus.
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I've got two media baskets on it at the moment. I haven't tried the fleece roller yet, but I was thinking on giving it a go soon to see if I like it. I'd rather not have biomedia in the baskets though. I'd rather them stay in the chambers and only occasionally clean them as needed. If my mechanical filtration is on point, would a lot of detritus still build up on the biomedia though?
 
Coral reefer said:
You shouldn’t need biomedia for long with the live rock in the tank
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So having an abundance of it in the filtration chambers isn't better? Honest question...more surface area is not better for the bacteria? In my head, having some extra available to seed other tanks or help out local reefers getting started was in the back of my mind as well.
 
ReyDeFarts said:
So having an abundance of it in the filtration chambers isn't better? Honest question...more surface area is not better for the bacteria? In my head, having some extra available to seed other tanks or help out local reefers getting started was in the back of my mind as well.
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The traditional thinking is that more live rock and sand the better, that it helps keep nitrates down.
Nitrates are easy to manage via many other means these days though, and aren’t the bad guy they used to be with folks generally targeting much higher levels.

Also, a lot of very successful reefers (and coral farms) run tanks with minimal live rock, none in some cases. I said this in another thread somewhere but Jake Adams thinks all the extra bacteria is unnecessary and all of that respiration puts downward pressure on PH. Think about how bacteria blooms can suck all of the oxygen out of your water - same idea.

I don’t know if that’s significant or not, but it makes sense to me. I will also say that my last tank had tons of sand and rock all packed into the sump, and my PH was always terrible. With this reboot I’ve minimized both (basically nothing in sump, much less sand in DT) and my PH is on average much higher.

Could be many other factors, of course, and this is just one anecdote - YMMV.
 
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