Progress

Ok so I picked up a couple more blue legs and some empty shells. Turns out one of the shells had a snail in it!! Woohoo! Anywho, once I dropped the new blues and the empty shells in there was a shuffle to find everyones new homes and it was great to see everyone trading shells!!
Dragonet is doing great. She's become VERY inquisitive!! She likes to patrol her tank and sit by the skimmer filter plucking pods
Picked up a small peppermint shrimp as well. When we brought him home he went into hiding. He hid for almost two days and I would check under his rock to make sure he was ok. Today I look and I see a skeleton of what I thought was once my shrimp. He is still alive, just molted!!!! He's doing well and comes out for feedings I try to target feed him since he's still a bit bashful and of course he is still hiding, waiting to harden up.


So all in all it seems everyone is happy and doing really well

 

not to be a downer or anything, but your tank is probably not mature enough for a mandarin and he will likely starve to death unless he is taking prepared foods. Watch him close and consider returning him for now until your tank is ready

 

I was thinking the same thing. Usually they require larger tanks with a refugium and a mature, older tank, because the pod population needs time to grow and they will destroy the pod population in a hurry and when that's done, they will slowly starve to death, that is unless he is taking prepared foods. a bigger tank or refugium will allow a safe place for the pods to reproduce. They are a beautiful fish, but are harder to keep due to their feeding requirements.

 

I believe in the first post I stated much the same. He does eat prepared foods and the pod population in the tank is flourishing. I know they're finicky which is why I'm glad he's eating gut loaded brine and mysis/algae cubes as well

Not knocking the advice, I appreciate the thoughtfulness

 

So it's been about a month, a little more, and I still don't have GHA. All params are at 0 and I know I had my cycle spikes. Now there are about 8-9 hermits, a shrimp, a snail, a shell with like 6 feather dusters living on it (waiting for one of the larger hermits to inhabit and walk around with the dusters), innumerable copepods and my dragonet.....no GHA??

Dragonet is doing well, his dorsal area is nicely filled out now

 

whats happening with the camera? Whippy

 

I know, I know. Haven't gotten there yet.

Camera was deaded by my car. I had been soooo careful while taking the top end of my motor apart and photo documenting everything..... In the end the hood went down and bit the camera, a fatal wound


Oh, added some red gracilaria to the tank as well. Still need to get some powerheads but they're so expensive!! Maybe it's just where I'm looking, who knows.

And Mr. Shrimp molted again.

 

Just added two small nassarius snails and an algae Blenny. The algae blenny is fantastic and is munching on the rocks/algae wafers.

Also added my first coral. Got a zoa colony. Nice dense colony for about $20, will post pics asap. Yellow/orange mouths, purple&cream disks with red long, frilly tentacles w/ green tips. They're pretty cool.

I have the zoas at the top of the tank in good flow and light. First day in they were fully extended and have stayed that way! I'm pretty pleased.

Added some more sand as well and everything liiks great!!

 

Another Update:
Did another water change, all is well in the tank.

Zoas look good, fully extended since the minute they were placed in the tank, except for night-time of course! Just ordered some phyto to feed all the little critters in the tank. One of my blue leg hermits has grown to about 10x his oriinal size quickly, guess it's keeping those extra shells in there so he feels the need to grow faster

Algae Blenny is fantastic. He is about 3" long and eats the algae sheets like no bodys business. Scooter blenny is doing really well, always picking at the rocks

Shrimp has molted again (3rd time since introduced to the tank) and the feather duster is happy as a pig in mud!!

Introduced some (2) nassarius snails (got them for free because LFS didn't have barcode for them) and I love watching them scoot around the tank!!!

All in all I'm really pleased with the progress of the tank!! I'm so excited. Now I'm trying to decide what other fish I'm going to ass. I think I only want one more. The only non-worker fish I have is the dragonet so I need another fish that's just there to look nice and just be a fish!!

 

any photos???