Red Leg Hermits

[ReefFan]

These lil bastids DO eat coralline. They are probably the best for mowing down problem algae but when that isnt abundant they do chow on the purple. I've been moving these guys around alot, from algae scrubber, to holding tank, because I keep forgetting to give them away. I wasnt postive that it was the crabs causing the disappearance of my coralline. But last night I threw them in my DT again. I woke up to 3 of them goin to town on the new coralline growth that took two weeks to establish. They dismantled about half of the new stuff in one night. You'd think the guys at my local fish store would warn me that they have a tendency to cause reef destruction. I took every single red leg out now. The Sea Hare, snails and blue legs will hopefully take care of the cleanup.

 

[ReefFan]

I guess i[m concerned with it cuz thats pretty much my goal in this whoelething. Get the rock encrusted and its happenin really slow. Apparnetly people have tanks that grow the stuff all over the place like crazy, but not mine. Maybe they have a face melting light over their tanks. So if thats what the difference is, perhaps i should re-define my goals with reefkeeping until i can afford that light. Maybe i'm an oddball for wanting full encrustation of coralline algae. But I shall stop posting bout it lol. ITs quite simply the first thing i wanted to master before going in other reef directions But i can even see the pursuit is seeming a bit redundant. I'll take your word for it, eventually the stuff grows without any need for concern.

 

[trido]

:lol: You may find that mastering coraline growth is going to be a more difficult task than growing SPS corals. :lol:

 

[ReefFan]

:lol: You may find that mastering coraline growth is going to be a more difficult task than growing SPS corals. :lol:

Mmm, hence my anger when i see hermit crabs munching on something that takes a while to calicify. But since I 86'd all 14 of them, the coralline growth has been noticeably accelerated. Maybe it does grow back faster after its been scraped off but when you have as many red legs as i did, it would be constantly scraped. I just had too many. Now all appears as it should be. Its really a thriving environment for every organism I have in there. Polyps, anenome's, 5 different types of feather dusters, sponges and now the coralline.. all that stuff is growing like crazy. I should really get some pics up here, start my own tank thread so I can chronicle its progress