Planning for a vacation... UPDATE on 2nd Page!

Glad to hear everything is fine (other than algae LOL).
How old is this tank? If it's only a few months, I'd wait on the mandarin unless you know for a fact it's eating something besides pods. It may look like a lotta pods to you, but they eat all day long and those pods won't last.

 

Good point. I guess I will wait until after the new year.. it will be 7ish months at that point. I'll have plenty to do with the controller and algae (hopefully not) until then.

Ideas on algae relief? Emerald crab? ALso, it appears the clean up crew isn't turning the sand quickly enough.... Should I add more or will a couple different inverts be better? I'd like to stay away from starfish, I don't think it would last long in my 55.

 

I'd stay away from starfish too, it'll just slowly starve to death. Not sure what your cleanup crew consists of. I would've had an emerald today, but they were out LOL.
I'd wait for the tank to be at minimum a year old before getting a mandarin, the tank needs to be really well established for one of those or it'll starve to death too unless they're eating offered food too or you have a pod farm LOL.

 

Thanks for the tip I guess I'll re-evaluate after the new year and see what I want to do. After seeing what a week of not tampering with the system can do I'm excited to see what happens in the coming months. If I feel the incredible need I'll start a pod farm in some of my spare buckets otherwise I'll just wait til summer.

May pick up an emerald crab tomorrow at the lfs when I go and stock up on some things I guess. Still need some ideas for the sand... Maybe I'll invest in some more nerites.

 

I wish I saw this post earlier, I would've had a good excuse to visit SD! I'm about 30 minutes north of you in Laguna niguel, that's 30 minutes driving as fast as I do.

Glad to see the worst that happened was a little bit of cyno! Maybe in the future we can do a frag swap, or maybe you can just take some off my hands

 

Haha I'm a noob that is about to get my first coral at the end of the week (Kenya tree) so maybe not so much on the frag department haha, sorry. But it's nice to know someone is close on here.