Live Rock inhabitants

[miskairal]

I got my live rock last week and am seeing things I'd like to identify.
Is there somewhere good to find out what they are and whether they are
good or bad? I'm currently at Reef Central going through the Live Rock
Hitchikers but there aren't many answers there. Dialup is so slow to go
searching pictures when you dont' have a name or any search words.

I briefly saw some sort of crab last night in the dark that hid away. It
was about 5cm across. It's so amazing that this stuff all survives being
removed form water at some point. My live rock came from Cairns so I'm
assuming it is from part of the Great Barrier Reef. I got to thinking
that many of the living things that only come out at night may never
have been seen and identified???

Thankyou
miskairal

[TekCat]

Where did you get your LR? I ordered uncured from LiveAquaria and Premium
Aquatics, and no crabs, ... just one worm, that didn't survive curing.

[miskairal]

TekCat wrote:
> Where did you get your LR? I ordered uncured from LiveAquaria and Premium
> Aquatics, and no crabs, ... just one worm, that didn't survive curing.
>
>
I'm in Australia and got it through a petshop at Maroochydore in Qld and
they said it came down from Cairns. It was at their shop for 6 days
before I could get there to pick it up so a fair bit of the dying off
process had already occurred. I have also seen a little shrimp looking
thing that is sort of clearish/white and there are a few bits of coral
including a brain coral.

Should I be feeding the crab or will there be sufficient stuff in there
for it to eat? Are crabs a good thing?

[TekCat]

> Should I be feeding the crab or will there be sufficient stuff in there
> for it to eat? Are crabs a good thing?

If you're curing/cycling your tank, I wouldn't add food just yet.
I know that some crabs are considered not to be reef safe, you might want to
identify it ask someone who knows :)

[Tidepool Geek]

Hi Miskairal,

If you and your live rock are both from Australia then you're home
free! Rather than looking through aquarium literature get yourself some
field guides for the area in question. Almost any good sized bookstore
should have something in stock but it might be worthwhile to check out
a dive shop or two as well.

Bibliographically yours,

Alex

[miskairal]

Tidepool Geek wrote:
> Hi Miskairal,
>
> If you and your live rock are both from Australia then you're home
> free! Rather than looking through aquarium literature get yourself some
> field guides for the area in question. Almost any good sized bookstore
> should have something in stock but it might be worthwhile to check out
> a dive shop or two as well.
>
> Bibliographically yours,
>
> Alex
>
Thanks. I intend getting a good book but I'm 2 1/2 hour's drive from any
halfway decent bookstore and I dont really want to take my chances
buying online where I won't know what I'm getting. I never thought to
get field guides though - good idea!

What do you mean that I'm "home free"? Are there less bad critters and
diseases in Oz?

Thanks again Alex.

[miskairal]

TekCat wrote:
>>Should I be feeding the crab or will there be sufficient stuff in there
>>for it to eat? Are crabs a good thing?
>
>
> If you're curing/cycling your tank, I wouldn't add food just yet.
> I know that some crabs are considered not to be reef safe, you might want to
> identify it ask someone who knows :)
>
>
The tank is cycling for sure as I've only had the rock a week. Problem
with identifying the crab is that it hides and I only catch a glimpse of
it in amongst the rock and it looks like the rock :) I'm going to take
another look tonight when the lights go out and see if I can get a
better look.
Thanks TekCat.

[Tidepool Geek]

Hello again,

For your purposes I would think that you'd be best served by what I
think of as a "simple" field guide. Such a book would have good
photographs of each animal accompanied by a short description, a few
vital statistics and, most important, the correct scientific name. The
more in-depth sort of books can get pretty frustrating when all you
really want to do is figure out what the heck just crawled out of a
rock. For some reason, more detailed information always seems to come
at the price of being more inconvenient to use for identification. My
favorite book for indentifying animals manages to handle 2 to 4 species
per 8.5 inch by 5.5 inch page. Once you've got an I.D. with scientific
name then you can do some serious work on Google.

What I meant by "home free" was just that having only "local"
hitchhikers gives you a much simpler path to identification. After what
I've seen on various wild animal TV shows I'd never say that there were
less bad critters in Oz! Sometimes it seems like everything other than
the Koala will either kill you or kill you AND eat you. [I just watched
a special about those tiny Box Jellies and it scared the cr*p out of
me!] [I also recently read on either Reef Central or Tonmo about a
researcher that was collecting small pieces of coral rubble for an
experiment and inadvertantly collected a Blue Ring octopus that had
been using one of the chunks for a den.]

Timidly yours,

Alex

[miskairal]

Tidepool Geek wrote:
> Hello again,
>
> For your purposes I would think that you'd be best served by what I
> think of as a "simple" field guide. Such a book would have good
> photographs of each animal accompanied by a short description, a few
> vital statistics and, most important, the correct scientific name. The
> more in-depth sort of books can get pretty frustrating when all you
> really want to do is figure out what the heck just crawled out of a
> rock. For some reason, more detailed information always seems to come
> at the price of being more inconvenient to use for identification. My
> favorite book for indentifying animals manages to handle 2 to 4 species
> per 8.5 inch by 5.5 inch page. Once you've got an I.D. with scientific
> name then you can do some serious work on Google.
>
> What I meant by "home free" was just that having only "local"
> hitchhikers gives you a much simpler path to identification. After what
> I've seen on various wild animal TV shows I'd never say that there were
> less bad critters in Oz! Sometimes it seems like everything other than
> the Koala will either kill you or kill you AND eat you. [I just watched
> a special about those tiny Box Jellies and it scared the cr*p out of
> me!] [I also recently read on either Reef Central or Tonmo about a
> researcher that was collecting small pieces of coral rubble for an
> experiment and inadvertantly collected a Blue Ring octopus that had
> been using one of the chunks for a den.]
>
> Timidly yours,
>
> Alex
>
Hahaaa, yeah apparently it can be scary here but when you grow up with
it you dont' really notice. I've got a large bird aviary, about 20' x
15' and went to clean their water dishes yesterday and found a very
large, brown snake skin on the floor. Never found the snake but I have
to keep going back in there to feed and water the birds. Between that
and the crab in the tank....

Oh and Koalas can rip you to bits with their claws :) Those sweet,
cuddly looking animals have claws strong enough to climb trees that have
few branches low down. I think our native birds are pretty safe ;)

That makes a lot of sense about getting a simple book. All I need is a
name for a critter to be able to find out more info.

Thanks again!

[Marc Levenson]

Since you are on dialup, this may not be worth trying, but my ID page is
always up. You may see a few things you recognize perhaps.

http://www.melevsreef.com/id/

Marc


miskairal wrote:
> I got my live rock last week and am seeing things I'd like to identify.
> Is there somewhere good to find out what they are and whether they are
> good or bad? I'm currently at Reef Central going through the Live Rock
> Hitchikers but there aren't many answers there. Dialup is so slow to go
> searching pictures when you dont' have a name or any search words.
>
> I briefly saw some sort of crab last night in the dark that hid away. It
> was about 5cm across. It's so amazing that this stuff all survives being
> removed form water at some point. My live rock came from Cairns so I'm
> assuming it is from part of the Great Barrier Reef. I got to thinking
> that many of the living things that only come out at night may never
> have been seen and identified???
>
> Thankyou
> miskairal

--
Personal Page: http://www.sparklingfloorservice.com/oanda/index.html
Business Page: http://www.sparklingfloorservice.com
Marine Hobbyist: http://www.melevsreef.com

[miskairal]

Marc Levenson wrote:
> Since you are on dialup, this may not be worth trying, but my ID page is
> always up. You may see a few things you recognize perhaps.
>
> http://www.melevsreef.com/id/
>
> Marc
>
>
> miskairal wrote:
>
>> I got my live rock last week and am seeing things I'd like to
>> identify. Is there somewhere good to find out what they are and
>> whether they are good or bad? I'm currently at Reef Central going
>> through the Live Rock Hitchikers but there aren't many answers there.
>> Dialup is so slow to go searching pictures when you dont' have a name
>> or any search words.
>>
>> I briefly saw some sort of crab last night in the dark that hid away.
>> It was about 5cm across. It's so amazing that this stuff all survives
>> being removed form water at some point. My live rock came from Cairns
>> so I'm assuming it is from part of the Great Barrier Reef. I got to
>> thinking that many of the living things that only come out at night
>> may never have been seen and identified???
>>
>> Thankyou
>> miskairal
>
>
Thankyou. I've been to your site before and it was slow for me but I now
have a couple of pages saved to my pc so I don't have to reload them.

Pretty pathetic of me when you think that before I got internet access
about 5 years ago I would have had to wait months to get info and now
I'm too slack to wait 10-15 minutes for a page to load, eh?

While writing this the alarm went off to tell me to go and turn off the
RO unit and the crab is out and about and I got my first good look at
it. There is only a single fluoro on now (I've got the lights set on
timers to go out one by one). It's about 2-3 cm across the body and
looks like a piece of grey/brown rock, sort of hairy. It has only one
large black claw on one side, not two like the crabs you eat. It seems
to be picking off dying seaweed and eating it. Your link has loaded
while I've been doing all this and there is nothing remotely similar to
this crab. Mine's drab and dull :) This is one of the pages I have saved
from your site. My stuff is all dull coloured compared to what's on this
page.

I was so looking forward to getting the fish but now I'm just fascinated
with all the other living things in there.

Thanks again Marc.

[Jeff]

miskairal wrote:
> I got my live rock last week and am seeing things I'd like to identify.
> Is there somewhere good to find out what they are and whether they are
> good or bad? I'm currently at Reef Central going through the Live Rock
> Hitchikers but there aren't many answers there. Dialup is so slow to go
> searching pictures when you dont' have a name or any search words.
>
> I briefly saw some sort of crab last night in the dark that hid away. It
> was about 5cm across. It's so amazing that this stuff all survives being
> removed form water at some point. My live rock came from Cairns so I'm
> assuming it is from part of the Great Barrier Reef. I got to thinking
> that many of the living things that only come out at night may never
> have been seen and identified???
>
> Thankyou
> miskairal

Hi Miskairal,

I know you've only got dial-up but this site is worth a visit - it's a
hitchhiker FAQ.
Click on the 'Quick-Jump' and select what you want.

Best Wishes,

Jeff

[miskairal]

Jeff wrote:
> miskairal wrote:
>
>> I got my live rock last week and am seeing things I'd like to
>> identify. Is there somewhere good to find out what they are and
>> whether they are good or bad? I'm currently at Reef Central going
>> through the Live Rock Hitchikers but there aren't many answers there.
>> Dialup is so slow to go searching pictures when you dont' have a name
>> or any search words.
>>
>> I briefly saw some sort of crab last night in the dark that hid away.
>> It was about 5cm across. It's so amazing that this stuff all survives
>> being removed form water at some point. My live rock came from Cairns
>> so I'm assuming it is from part of the Great Barrier Reef. I got to
>> thinking that many of the living things that only come out at night
>> may never have been seen and identified???
>>
>> Thankyou
>> miskairal
>
>
> Hi Miskairal,
>
> I know you've only got dial-up but this site is worth a visit - it's a
> hitchhiker FAQ.
> Click on the 'Quick-Jump' and select what you want.
>
> Best Wishes,
>
> Jeff
Hey I'll try anything at this point as I still haven't identified what's
in my tank and have ordered books through the library but that can take
months here.

Umm, do you have a link?
:)

[Jeff]

>
> Umm, do you have a link?
> :)

Err.. sorry about that - forgot to put in it didn't I :-0

http://www.reefs.org/hhfaq/

[miskairal]

Jeff wrote:
>
>>
>> Umm, do you have a link?
>> :)
>
>
> Err.. sorry about that - forgot to put in it didn't I :-0
We've all done it :)
>
> http://www.reefs.org/hhfaq/

Hey this is great!
Thankyou!