afgun

Last weekend we bought a couple of condi, a LTA and BTA and 3 feather dusters. One feather duster seems to have been eaten, but everything else is doing well a week later (pretty good record for this tank given its history of predation). And this morning I found a brittle star! We got 2 with the order from TBS and one ended up getting chewed up by something. The other hasn't been seen in 2-3 months. Well, surprise surprise, he's still around!

We got 2 black spiny sea urchins with the TBS order and shortly after things settled in we noticed that we had a baby urchin. He's grown to almost as large as the 2 adults, and last week we also noticed another new baby urchin!

We have dozens of porcelain crabs (good!), several red mithrax crabs (unsure) and a bunch of teeny gorilla crabs (not so good) and an EXTREMELY healthy copepod population in the tank. Thinking about getting a mandarin goby...

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

I appreciate the offer, Lamont. The issue is determining which rock the thing is hiding in... I really don't want to kill off all of the live rock in my hunt to catch the other mantis. Let you know if we decide to get radical though!

Aha!!! My wife and I were looking at the tank today and who should poke his head out but one of our pests! He was in a large rock that I had relocated on top of the remains of what I broke apart the other day... I grabbed a bucket while my wife made sure he was still in the rock and I yanked it out. This time I tried something different. I plucked all of the snails and crabs that I could off of the rock and tossed them back in the tank, then took the bucket and rock to the back yard, where I filled it with fresh water. The mantis was not at all pleased with his sudden trip out of the water followed by no salinity, and promptly left the rock.

The rock went back into the tank and the mantis... let's just say that he won't be troubling us any more unless this is more than just urban legend...

We're keeping our eye out for the other mantis that we suspect is still in the tank, along with an opportunity to nab "great white" as we've dubbed the large light colored crab (rock?) that also might be predating the tank, before we start adding more vulnerable livestock again.

I've definitely got mantis; anyone have stories with success at catching them?

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?

We have lost some firefish. Probably nailed by the 2+ Mantis shrimp that are still hiding in the rocks. They've taken out 4 firefish, a hawkfish and 6 chromis.; also driven 2 zebra striped bar gobies to carpet surf

I'm actually going out of town early tomorrow morning and won't have internet access. Back mid-day Friday. If someone in the RR/Pville/Hutto area is willing, I'd like a

1.5 oz Jar of Reef Chili Coral Food

added to their order; I'll reimburse for that and shipping next weekend.

If nobody in the area is participating and/or willing, no problem. Just let me know if you are. Thanks!

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.

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?

If you have room to add another sump... drill the side of your current sump (assuming acrylic here) put a bulkhead in and pipe to an auxiliary sump...

Do you know WHERE the leak is?

Got my aquagloves... just need to use them more regularly.

...having been sitting out of water for an hour or so in the sun...

Shrimp on the barbie Texas style?

Apparently! ;-)

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.

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...

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

yow, that thing is pricey.

Yep. I received an unexpected bonus at work, and made my mind up to blow it on the aquarium. I'll share my good fortune with the ARC

Following along as I think that this is a spectacular idea!

I received my Apogee yesterday. I'll be drumming up some readings shortly. I will also make it available for loan to ARC members.

You should put the LED over your tank and redo all of the PAR readings with it, then you would know if you were getting more or less with the LED. I know they have pretty high PAR at the waters surface but what about at the bottom of the tank?

I'll post up my PAR numbers after my meter gets here. I'm using LEDs.

cool, i need to buy me one of those there meters. Now im curious how my reflector is working. What did your #s look like?

I have one on order that I'll make available for loan.

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?

A large cleanup crew keeps ours in check

I definitely have that much. Yours if you want it.

I still have plenty of chunks. How large do you want? It's not terribly expensive for a full 2x4 sheet at the home stores (about $11) and gas from CP to RR isn't cheap these days either

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?