Survival of the fittest

[Brooke]

As some of you know our reef crashed last June. Well, it has sat quietly since then with no circulation, no heat, no food, no nothing. We finally got around to poking around in there this weekend and here is our list of survivors:
one peppermint shrimp
2 rock crabs
one hermit crab
a few snails
and a mantis that I saw, but is eluding us for the moment...darn it!!!

So folks, some of our creatures are amazingly hardy surviving salinity off the chart and 68 degree temps.

So, the rock crabs are in the sump and the other critters are going into my horse tank.

They will all get fed a nice meal tonight.

Brooke

[FishDaddy]

Wow, Brooke, that's one tough bunch of critters you have there! I can understand the rock crabs, they're almost indestructible, but its especially surprising about the Peppermint.
Sounds like all you need to do is top off the tank and turn on the pumps and you and Jon are back in business!
Dick

[Brooke]

Yeah Dick, if we had known a pepp was in there we would have gone in much earlier!! It is really amazing. There is also one unidentified coral/anemone looking thing that had been moving around the tank. The only thing we were sure was alive was one rock crab...but we captured two of them. We took all the rock out and are giving the sand a good sucking. Now it's time to make more water and turn on the pumps. The nice thing about leaving water in the tank is that the coralline algae has survived for the most part and the tank should be full of bacteria

Brooke

[Alice]

That's pretty amazing Brooke! Here I was all excited about the shipment of snails we got at the shop that had been shipped dry in between layers of wet nespaper, lol.

~Alice