so confused by my new LR

[copi]

As I've mentioned in a couple related posts this morning, I received my first live rock from LR.com today. My other posts were related to identification so I think this warrants it's own topic: I'm so incredibly confused!

I thought that the idea of the hitchhikers on LR was to add diversity to my tank, but so far everything that I've found sounds to be bad...

aptasia: bad
red crabs: will pick at coral
large hairy-looking crab with black tipped pincers: predatory

...so it sounds like I need to remove all of these things, right? But then what is all of this about diversity? I'm sure my rookie-ness is leading me to miss something here...

Help?

 

[mybug]

True, but look at the color

That is true, there are unwanted hitchhikers, but look at the color. I thought I wanted the hitchhikers also but quickly decided the some of them weren't so keen.

My crabs molted in two weeks and balooned in size and were after my clowns pretty quickly. They went to a LFS.

But the color, well, nothing like it, compare it to rock at a LFS and there isn't much of a comparison.

I've got a clam of some kind that filter feeds, lots of purple corealine and some great porous structure to aquascape with.

We picked up some urchins on our rock, they remain in the tank at the moment. Some snails and small pistol shrimp tagged along also.

I'm going to introduce a Peppermint shrimp this week and he'll likely clean the rock up some from what I'm told. The aptasia is a little ugly but not terribly.

 

[Thumper]

A lot of the good hitchikers you mentioned will not show up for several weeks or maybe a couple months, I have 6 different corals growing now along with pistol shrimp, snails,star fish and a ton of pods, etc. You have good ones you may not have seen them yet but their their.
I'm amaised everytime I go out of town for a day only to return to something new on the LR. Dont get discouraged, i promise it will all be worth it in a few weeks.

 

[Phyl]

I have one coral colony that showed up (actually 3 of the same type in different colonies) Dozens of clams of all sorts of shapes and size (that look so much like the rock that they're on/in I thought they WERE rock at first), starfish, bristle worms, porcelain crabs, spaghetti worms, pods, denitrifying bacteria, coraline algae, pistol shrimp... these are some of the things that you've gotten (or may have gotten) on your live rock that you don't know about yet. It doesn't all just show up at once. You'll be looking at your tank in a month going ... where'd THAT come from? Holy cow! Hey look I've got some of THAT in my tank now... Hey! That's a clam on there! You'll be amazed.

Some of it hides IN the rock, some of it is on the rock and you didn't see it, etc. All the hitch hikers aren't bad. Just a few are. Luckily you've pulled off some of the bad ones. I just snagged a worm from my tank that came in 3 months ago and we've only seen this thing twice.

 

[cmor1701d]

I'm still amazed at the new things I find growing on my Fiji and other LR. The amount of unwanted hitchhikers (both dead and alive) and temp of the rock caused me to cycle my lr.com rock outside of my main tank. I posted my experience with them last year. Over the next few months I read quite a few other posts about the pests that come along with that rock.

I am of the opinion that everything should be in QT before it goes into the main tank.

 

[X the Outsider]

I bought mine at a LFS, but you still get good stuff in time. I've got quite a few feather dusters growing. I've seen worms, and a clam in one of my rocks. And now that I added a new light; I'm expecting more growth. At first I was looking forward to the hitchhikers, but I'm lucky for not having anything nasty come out; yet. I've pulled some nasty little critters from LR at work to know I don't want to mess with some of it.

One thing is give it time to grow. Sometimes it takes months for life to grow. I have a friend who it took almost six months for stuff to grow on his rock.