Get lucky with hitchhikers

We visited the LFS this past weekend to pick up some live rock, turns out a lady in the area was dismantling her 90g tank and donating a lot of her livestock back to the store. We scooped up an engineering goby, green chromis, and about 5 pounds of LR.

The rocks excite me the most, there's plenty of color on them already. One rock has a nicely sized toadstool leather coral on it and another has what looks like a mushroom leather. I've never had corals in my tank (still fairly new to the hobby) so these alien lifeforms are really intriguing to me, even if they are the simplest and easiest to care for.

Pics will come soon!

Has anyone else gotten some coral hitchhikers off their LR in the past?

 

That is fantastic! Very exciting.

I recently got a microscopic pieces of Stylophora that came in on another frag, now that microscopic pieces is almost a medium size frags.

 

You would have loved the old imported live rock before it became illegal to ship in. That had crazy stuff on it. You knew it was live rock day at the LFS as soon as you went in because of the stink. I miss those times.

 

But if it had a stink wouldn't that mean everything was dead? If so why would it be any better than regular rock?

 

There was so many critters on the surface, some would naturally not make it. Sponges. Algae. Crazy unknowns. The life left on the rock was crazy. Any critter that could find shelter within the rock did so, but that stuff was shipped dry across the world in dry boxes. It was amazing. I would go on liverock day just to shake the rock and see what fell off to take pictures of. All we have now is recycled rock.

 

Big time! I miss those days as well. All the cool macro algae, sponges and inverts that used to come in on true uncured LR. Those days I soft cycled as much as I could to preserve all the amazing flora and fauna. The rock smelled like the beach at low tide.

Now it's cured rock with aiptasia, flatworms (the bad kind) and undesirable algae.

 

And we don't even have pictures to reminisce with because there were no digital cameras back then. I remember trying to get pics with a regular camera and they kept coming back all green. *sigh* it really was a different time. Every coral you bought was already the size of your head, using tap water, reading books and hanging at the LFS for your resources.....

Not saying it was better back then. We were still just trying to get our few soft corals to survive, now difficult SPS and NPS specimens are thriving and reproducing. Amazing watching the progression.

 

Yeah...the Kailini, Marshall Is. and some of the other "premium" stuff was really something to see. I remember starting systems and going to the LFS to find the smelliest pieces of LR to start the cycle. I looked like a shopper at a produce stand lifting the rock and giving it a sniff to find the "ripe" pieces...

 

I just got 30 lbs of Pukani live rock from my LFS and was hoping for some hitchikers but I havent seen anything at all in 3 days. Slightly disappointing but the rock is gorgeous and it locks together real nice. And my LFS is pretty amazing so I am pretty fortunate in that respect.

 

Which is a great thing. I'm glad that we've transitioned to more of recyling and propagation. It not only benefits our fragile reef ecosystems, but also sustains our beloved hobby and should make it cheaper in the long run.

I shake my head at the way Asian nations treat their reefs with such carelessness and recklessness.