Marine Critters

[Truck]

hi on cured live rock can you tell me what i am likley to introduce to my aquarium such as animals sponges algea corals polyps

 

[ox5477]

The list is really too big to give a concise list here. If you search online there are websites devoted to "hitch-hikers" and will give you plenty of goodies and badies

Most common hitchhikers I would say are:
- various snails (goodies usually)
- various crabs (usually a badie)
- small polyps (goodies usually)
- aiptasia (badie, very invasive animal)
- pods (goodies)
- various algae (goodies and badies)

I know I missed a bunch prob but look around on google and will find a lot of info on hitchikers

 

[Colin_T]

some live rock will have nothing on it but other pieces will have macro algae, corals, sponges and tubeworms. Look at the individual pieces and buy the ones that have things on them.

Mantis shrimp will often get into a tank with live rock. Check the pieces over carefully and probe any holes with a pencil or cake scewer. If mantis shrimp get into the tank they can cause problems.

 

[xxBarneyxx]

Basically anything that lives on or around the rock in the wild could still be on it. Crabs are fairly common (I think mainly because they can survive pretty well out of water as long as they are kept damp and they are pretty hard to kill off). Unfortunetly it tends to be that the hardier critters are often the ones we dont really want

Some things are less likely to survive being removed from the sea and transported (sponges for example) but their larvee/spores/eggs may survive fine within the rock which is why you can often start off with some pretty lifeless looking rock then after a few weeks suddenly find new things spring up from nowhere.

Apart from one peice of LR I bought from my LFS all the rest looked pretty dead (it was just bare, empty looking rock).
However I have:
At least 4 crabs (1 is now about 2" across the other 1"),
1 strange worm (cant remeber the name of it now but it took weeks to ID it),
Lots of little feather dusters and lots of little brittle stars (these mostly came from one rock that a coral was attached to and are spreading out a lot now),
Loads of bristleworms.
One small black and white snail.
One small white snail.
A spaghetti worm which has moved into one of the empty shells that are in the tank for the hermits.
Loads of little pod's
Some very pretty orange and brown Zoa's
A small Corallimorph
Some weird thing I have never fully seen but has extendable tenticals which it puts out over the rocks at night.
Some other weird pink blob which extends little hollow tubes.
Loads of other stuff I have probably never seen

My tank has been running now since September and I'm still seeing new stuff appearing in it.

 

[@ombomb]

i got:

crab - bad one
aiptasia
various types of pods
zoanthids
sponges
macro algae
snails
starfish
pistol shrimp (i think)
various bivalves
bristle worms
peanut worms
spaghetti worms
barnacles
feather dusters
stomatella


just seen a post on reef central from someone who got an octopus as a hitch hiker

 

[ox5477]

just seen a post on reef central from someone who got an octopus as a hitch hiker

Gees That would be a hell of thing to see in your tank when you wake up in the morning...