Some help with TBS live rock

[areefer01]

My daughter released him into the mangroves along the Tampa Bay the next day. Thankfully, we are in the same watershed as TBS.

If I read your story correctly you brought in live rock into your closed system then captured a hitch hiker, and release back into the wild?

 

[Quintin]

My base rock came with a few new friends. None as fun as yours though! Generally speaking, nothing that is keeping me up at night now. We did have a murdering letch that took out Snuffleupagus in the first 24 hours. (Fighting conch) It also took a healthy chunk out of one of my leathers. After some hunting, we identified "Bundy", the gorilla crab. I was not messing around. We tried the nets and bottles. I was making a mess of the tank and all I had captured was "Timmy", the tiny eraser head sized gorilla baby. Meanwhile, Bundy was molting and getting bigger. He left the molt front and center as if to taunt me. I ordered a trap from Ultralife off of Amazon and baited it with some canned shrimp. The first night, I placed it too far from his lair. The second night, I found the opening - teased him with the shrimp and set the trap. At first he literally picked it up with his claw and slammed it down, closing the door. I was quick and used a pipette to reopen and set the door. I then placed a small rock on top to keep Bundy from living out his Hulk fantasy on my plastic Alkatraz. I cut every light and waited. Less than an hour later, Bundy was my prisoner. My daughter released him into the mangroves along the Tampa Bay the next day. Thankfully, we are in the same watershed as TBS. We still have Tiny Timmy in a mason jar. He'll either get released when he's bigger or become food if we get any mantis in the box of premium and branch that we are expecting when the weather warms up. I know that the ladies at TBS do a good hunt in the haul for critters. It is normal to get some hitchhikers but you definitely got an above average amount. Maybe the cold drove them into the crevice's? Here's hoping that no octopi show up in my box. If there are more gorillas or mantis shrimp, I have my trusty trap ready.
Here is a link if it helps you. Best $15 I spent this month.
https://www.ultralife.com/product/x-terminator-shrimp-trap/
Amazon Link

lol, love your very descriptive story.
Yes, Wen and the team do a great job at collecting awesome looking rock full of life.

It’s probably my fault as I asked for rock with lots of crevices and stuff. So there is no way everything could have been removed before hand.

Will take some pictures and post it.
The big mantis I saw lives under the big base rock and suspect it’s got a buddy. Unless I’m going colour blind I’m sure I saw a yellow one and then a dark brown red one.

Another has setup a hole right in front of the tank and so tiny, that I wouldn’t have seen it, if it wasn’t for the tank magnifying glass.

Was showing the wife a decorator crab and this guy popped into view - unmistakable mantis eyes.

Closer inspection of the tank before dark revealed numerous ranging in size and colour.
Some yellow, others red brown and some green of which most are an inch or less.

 

[CMMorgan]

If I read your story correctly you brought in live rock into your closed system then captured a hitch hiker, and release back into the wild?

Yep

 

[CMMorgan]

lol, love your very descriptive story.
Yes, Wen and the team do a great job at collecting awesome looking rock full of life.

It’s probably my fault as I asked for rock with lots of crevices and stuff. So there is no way everything could have been removed before hand.

Will take some pictures and post it.
The big mantis I saw lives under the big base rock and suspect it’s got a buddy. Unless I’m going colour blind I’m sure I saw a yellow one and then a dark brown red one.

Another has setup a hole right in front of the tank and so tiny, that I wouldn’t have seen it, if it wasn’t for the tank magnifying glass.

Was showing the wife a decorator crab and this guy popped into view - unmistakable mantis eyes.

Closer inspection of the tank before dark revealed numerous ranging in size and colour.
Some yellow, others red brown and some green of which most are an inch or less.

You may want more than one trap. If I do get a cool little mantis, I'll set up a little tank for it. (shhh... don't tell my husband) I love going out to Cayo Costa and hearing them clicking in the mangroves. I'm going to cross my fingers and burn some sage or something though. I do not want to be chasing an octopus.

 

[Quintin]

You may want more than one trap. If I do get a cool little mantis, I'll set up a little tank for it. (shhh... don't tell my husband) I love going out to Cayo Costa and hearing them clicking in the mangroves. I'm going to cross my fingers and burn some sage or something though. I do not want to be chasing an octopus.

lol, if you are in the Lake Mary area you are welcome to pop in and collect whatever falls off the rock.

 

[JM302]

First I'll say - I wouldn't do it any other way..... I love my TBS rock and Sand. I ordered 100lbs of rock and 170lbs of sand.

I got 'lucky' with gorilla crabs, whelks, an octopus, mantis shrimp and I'm sure those parasitic isopods with the big eyeballs.

Luckily this was a part of a tank upgrade, so I was able to let the TBS rock sit in the new tank for a while allowing me to pick out more than 30 gorilla crabs and countless whelks. I also believe this fallow period gave the isopods a chance to die off before I transferred my fish.

With that said, just last week I think I caught my last gorilla crab - who I named Crabzilla. He is HUGE. What's crazy though, as I was looking for gorilla crabs, I ended up finding what I believe is a pistol shrimp. It has been 7 months since the rock has been in the upgraded tank and never saw it before. I find that insane.

Grand total of Gorilla crabs was well over 40. I made a neat little trap that worked wonderfully. I am however still picking out the whelks.

The bad guys are certainly real, but I am still in the camp of the good outweighs the bad.

 

[crabgrass]

How did you capture the octopus?

 

[Quintin]

First I'll say - I wouldn't do it any other way..... I love my TBS rock and Sand. I ordered 100lbs of rock and 170lbs of sand.

I got 'lucky' with gorilla crabs, whelks, an octopus, mantis shrimp and I'm sure those parasitic isopods with the big eyeballs.

Luckily this was a part of a tank upgrade, so I was able to let the TBS rock sit in the new tank for a while allowing me to pick out more than 30 gorilla crabs and countless whelks. I also believe this fallow period gave the isopods a chance to die off before I transferred my fish.

With that said, just last week I think I caught my last gorilla crab - who I named Crabzilla. He is HUGE. What's crazy though, as I was looking for gorilla crabs, I ended up finding what I believe is a pistol shrimp. It has been 7 months since the rock has been in the upgraded tank and never saw it before. I find that insane.

Grand total of Gorilla crabs was well over 40. I made a neat little trap that worked wonderfully. I am however still picking out the whelks.

The bad guys are certainly real, but I am still in the camp of the good outweighs the bad.

Definitely agree on the live rock.
The benefits outweigh the cons for sure.

 

[Quintin]

How did you capture the octopus?

Octopus was pure luck.

Previous experience with setting up tanks using live rock is to leave the rock out of water for 10 minutes and see what falls off.

That usually does the trick and enough to get most nasty things off close to the surface.

Was the first rock we pulled out of the box and let stand and the octopus crawled out of a tiny crevice. My daughter actually saw it and called me over. Then it was a frantic rush to get a bucket and add some water back to the bag to move the octopus for a donation to someone.

 

[areefer01]

Yep

You probably should not have done that...

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Yeah, releasing wildlife after it has been in an aquarium is generally illegal and frowned upon because it can cause some major problems (it doesn't always, but it can):

Returning the fish to the ocean is a bad idea (it could introduce nonnative diseases to local fish populations, it could breed and turn into an invasive species like lionfish have in Florida, etc., and each nonnative fish returned to the ocean is a PR blackeye for the hobby which could lead to/speed up regulation/restriction of the hobby).

 

[CMMorgan]

Yeah, releasing wildlife after it has been in an aquarium is generally illegal and frowned upon because it can cause some major problems (it doesn't always, but it can):

Well I'm going to have to disagree with you here. It came from Tampa Bay and it was returned back to the Tampa Bay about a week later. It's not an invasive species, as that is exactly where it is native. I live in the vicinity of TBS. It's not like it was shipped to me across the country and I introduced it to a new ecosystem. We just brought it back home, which is what we will do with any further TBS hitchhikers we come across.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

Well I'm going to have to disagree with you here. It came from Tampa Bay and it was returned back to the Tampa Bay about a week later. It's not an invasive species, as that is exactly where it is native. I live in the vicinity of TBS. It's not like it was shipped to me across the country and I introduced it to a new ecosystem. We just brought it back home, which is what we will do with any further TBS hitchhikers we come across.

The issue isn't with the hitchhikers from TBS in this case (as you mentioned, no risk of invasive species when the species is native to the area), it's with anything in the tank that's not native to the Tampa Bay Area - any corals, fish, inverts, macro, etc. in the tank that are from different areas (like the Indo-Pacific) which the hitchhikers are exposed to pose a potential pathogen issue for native wildlife; that's a big part of why it's generally illegal to release them.

Chances of introducing a non-native pathogen are low, but not zero.

 

[Quintin]

Octopus eggs are gone this morning ‍
Assuming either they hatched or got eaten.
Money is on the first.

 

[JM302]

Octopus eggs are gone this morning ‍
Assuming either they hatched or got eaten.
Money is on the first.

Do you have a strategy to catch gorilla crabs? I can't believe how many I ended up with. I thought I had them all in the first few weeks and it turned out that was just the beginning...

 

[Quintin]

Do you have a strategy to catch gorilla crabs? I can't believe how many I ended up with. I thought I had them all in the first few weeks and it turned out that was just the beginning...

I’m debating doing a hyper salinity dip this weekend but don’t want to shoot myself in the foot by removing both friend and foe from the rock.

I have so many good things on the rock that really come alive at night, it would be a real shame to loose all of that.

So still up in the air on what to do.

Get a six line wrasse to catch and eat the small ones or perhaps a copper band?

Else it may be bottle traps but you never gonna get them all.

Most nights after lights out, I spend about an hour with a red torch removing things - plenty of whelks, some Eunice worms, got a couple of crabs but even the really small ones hold on for dear life it’s nearly impossible to catch them.

As for the possible octopi running around.
You never gonna see any of them until they quite a lot bigger and can do some serious damage.

 

[jda]

Bottle traps all worked for me. It might take a few days, but beats a year of dino and hair algae. Put a handful of them in there - start drinking some soda.

If you are a super savage, you don't have to catch hairy crabs to take care of them. People used to use drill bit down the hiding hole all of the time. Some of those crabs will be dead of old age in a month or two - some can live about three years. Most are not harmful but some are. Nearly none of them are coral eaters by nature, but they will totally eat coral if there is nothing else for them to eat - they won't live on poop and detritus just like neither you nor I would either.

If you don't want do deal with most of this, then have them ship the rocks in newspaper... the crabs and shrimp all crawl out and die. Most of the stuff that you want on the rock lives just fine - corals do not, though.

 

[Tired]

Oh, for the gorilla crabs, long tongs and checking at night will get quite a few. Just gotta be quick.

 

[d2mini]

LOL, i just wanted to say that good or bad, that is quite impressive!
I've set up a bunch of tanks from large to small with TBS rock. Some rock that was fairly new/young and other rock that had been down there for many years. Small pieces to almost boulder sized. I've had a range of critters, the worst was a large stone crab. I've had my share of mantis, but even on the biggest tank with the oldest rock, i still only had 3. Never even knew there were octopus!

I'm sorry I can't answer your question since I've never been in this situation but wow. Super interesting. Hopefully you can at least knock down the mantis population with some suggestions here. Whelks you can pull out when you see them, same for gorillas, isopods will age out rather quickly. I have a mantis in my current tank, just the one as far as i've seen, and in the more than 1 year that I've had the tank running, this is the first time that a mantis hasn't come fully out looking for food, allowing me to grab him. That little sucker is just continuing to enjoy the free escargot!

 

[Quintin]

Oh, for the gorilla crabs, long tongs and checking at night will get quite a few. Just gotta be quick.

Yup, caught one of them giving my stylophora tester a hair cut. Managed to take him out pretty easily. Have a pair of 22” tweezers I use for that job.