Tank update! Opinions, thoughts, advice? :)

[Hiachi20]

Check out my tank so far! It's only a couple months old.

Livestock:
Black longspine urchin (diadema setosum)
Raccoon butterfly
Blue dot sea hare
Few nessarius snails
2 thinstripe hermits
4 Mexican red leg hermits
Questionable amount of California hermits
(About 15 I think)
Snowflake eel
Conch snail
2 3-stripe damsels
3 Limpet
Possible chiton

GREEN HAIR ALGAE- I'm about to do a blackout for the hair algae then adjust my feeding. Any advice on that? I plan to leave filtration and skimmer on in the process.

SELF CAUGHT FROM CALI- I got the limpets(?), some snails, and a bunch of those tan leg/white knee hermits, from the tide pools in California. They seem to do very well in cleaning the tank and are extremely active. So far, they don't seem too aggressive. The chiton should have been acclimated, whether or not they would have lived that way, idk. One or two lived longer and disappeared into the sand so idk if they're alive or not. The limpets make their way around the tank as well as the snails. I decorated the tank with some shells and barnacles or something I found on the beach (beautiful choice)

CORALLINE- Lots and lots of red coralline is growing on the rocks(photo below). There is plenty of green spreading and bits of pink. I would guess that I got lucky with the water conditions and the strain of coralline given how well it grows. My buddy's grows a lot as well and I used his rock to seed.

PLANKTON- I threw some reef stew in a couple times and wow there are a lot of tiny white specs running around the glass. Thoughts on maybe scraping them off and hoping they move onto the sand and rock? Or should I let them be for now? Either way, they're reproducing very much.

Everything seems to be doing pretty well so far. The urchin has spawned multiple times now and I would like to have it start to create more urchins wink wink. The urchin seems to find enough food on some glass areas and the red rock, rather than go onto the GHA like I would like, but he's doing well nonetheless. Spines are all growing longer. The sea hare seems to maybe be starving, but I am not sure and will have to see if he will take algae disks. He doesn't seem to eat seaweed or anything other than maybe brown algae on the glass. I just started feeding bloodworms to the fish. Eel takes krill every other day or so.

The crabs seem to be "pagurus hirsutiusculus" to me.

Thoughts? Advice? Opinions? Let me know! I would love to see what others have to say about my tank. Thank you!

 

[Tahoe61]

Looks good.

Urchins of different types eat different things, some are in fact not reef safe. Urchins broadcast spawn and require egg and sperm, I believe you need a female and male for that. You might try some Nori sheets for the urchin.
With regard to the pods they will move about so no need to attempt to relocate them.
The tank is pretty young so some GHA is common and will resolve if Nitrate and Phosphates levels are not elevated.

 

[Hiachi20]

Looks good.

Urchins of different types eat different things, some are in fact not reef safe. Urchins broadcast spawn and require egg and sperm, I believe you need a female and male for that. You might try some Nori sheets for the urchin.
With regard to the pods they will move about so no need to attempt to relocate them.
The tank is pretty young so some GHA is common and will resolve if Nitrate and Phosphates levels are not elevated.

I think that the only real way to tell the sex of these guys is by looking at the gametes under a scope. I have yet to look into this more. But I do plan on making it work. I've straight up put seaweed strips into it's alien teeth before. Good point about the pods. My fear is more that if I were to scrape the glass would they be wasted but I'm assuming that they would stick elsewhere.

 

[Hiachi20]

Looks good.

Urchins of different types eat different things, some are in fact not reef safe. Urchins broadcast spawn and require egg and sperm, I believe you need a female and male for that. You might try some Nori sheets for the urchin.
With regard to the pods they will move about so no need to attempt to relocate them.
The tank is pretty young so some GHA is common and will resolve if Nitrate and Phosphates levels are not elevated.

I should probably look into my phosphate levels. I don't have a test kit for that yet unfortunately