Aquarium Started

So we started a salt water aquarium - 55 gallon. We got it in late November. I'd like to catalog a bit about how the aquarium is going so the purpose of this post is to catch you up a bit.

We added some live rock. Live rock is rock which has come from the sea and has little organisms "hidden" in it which release into the tank over the years to come. Some of our friends have called these organisms "free," but for the cost of live rock, these organisms are more "imputed" than "free."

Everything started out swimmingly. There was a small fan worm on one of the rocks. Very beautiful! There were some colors starting to come out on the rocks. Suddenly, about 2 weeks into the project, we had a brown algae explosion. It was disgusting. Long brown algae on all the rocks. This was easily the most disgusting part of the project so far. You can see a bit of it in the picture below. That lasted about 2-3 weeks, truthfully 2-3 long weeks!


Because the brown algae did not seem to be abating, we decided to get something which would eat the algae. So about 1 month after getting the tank, we added 2 Astraea snails, 2 Nassarius snails, 3 blue-legged hermit crabs, and 1 red-legged hermit crab. We named the red-legged crab Ichabod pinch ("I-pinch"). This is what s/he (how do you know the sex of a hermit crab anyway??) looked like in his/her old shell.


About a week and a half ago, we had a green algae bloom. This did not last nearly as long, only about 1 week. And it was way less disgusting than the brown algae.

The back wall of the tank is now getting full of algae which is what we wanted. We have not been cleaning it off. We want it to have it become algae covered, so it can blend into the rocks. And the rocks are growing some nice little plants.

Two more weeks and we are getting our first fish!! Here is a more recent look at the same rock set as above. Thanks to Nate for all the professional photography!