My First Tank - 12 Gallon Nano

[redwarrior]

Hitch-hikers seen so far:
1 keyhole limpet
Several nass snails
1 hermit crab
2 bristle worms
2 cup corals
too many barnacles to count!
several sponges
several cerith snails
something that clicks a couple times in the mornings and evenings

 

[redwarrior]

My tank had an ammonia spike over the weekend.

The rock is quite a bit more bare now, but the snails were more active today than they ever have been. I'm hoping this means that we're over the hump. I also saw many feather dusters and there were tiny white spots on the glass...the snails seemed to like them.

A rock with some kind of small orange coral still hanging on.

The rock with the most amount of die-back. It still has 2 cup corals on it, but the red macroalgae is gone.

A close up shot of the biggest rock. This one had the most dying sponges I had to take off, but now it seems to be doing the best. It has many feather dusters and barnacles.

Another FTS. Things are looking a little more bare, but the inverts seemed much happier today.

 

[subielover]

Looks like you are in the home stretch of the cycle. i like it, and I have the same tank too. Also in the process of making the 2nd chamber a fuge, how and what are you using for lights in your fuge?

 

[blazin2k6]

You say you have a clicking noise in the morning at night time ? That is possibly a MANTIS shrimp. you would not want that in there as it will kill all your snails and crabs and possibly some fish. Also could hurt your finger if it got ya. Or it could be a pistol shrimp. Have you seen anything digging burrows ? My pistol shrimps when they make that pop noise its very loud like a gun or something. not that loud but i mean to hear a noise out of the fish tank is incredible.

 

[redwarrior]

I've had my hands all over this rock sniffing it for anything going bad and peeling off some sponges going south. I'm not sure, but if there was a mantis shrimp, it probably would have part of one of my fingers by now.
From talking to some "mantis" people, it seems more likely that this is a pistol shrimp. They told me that a mantis sounds more like a "thump" than a click and they usually just make the sound once, not several in a row. I'm going to keep an eye out for him, though. So far, he's been pretty shy and the snails seem to be flourishing.