Big Purchase

Now that ALL of the crabs from our tank we out, we felt fairly safe that the predator that was killing things was gone from the tank. We decided to go back to the store to re-stock.

I really wanted to get another peppermint shrimp for the tank, and wanted to add a few more snails (nerites this time) since we were starting to get algae growth on the back glass again. I had also read that many aquarists had great success with scarlet reef hermits for clean-up crew. Even though I had originally been biased against hermit due to the early snail deaths, I was much more comfortable adding them since they are SO easy to remove. They are almost always out in the open and they duck into their shells when they are frightened rather than scurrying under the rocks.

I knew from earlier phone calls, that Horizon was the only one with scarlet reef hermits, so I quickly went up there to pick up 2. We really wanted to shop at River City since we have done much of our shopping there. After I had the scarlet hermits, I met Allie and Ben at River City. I picked out 2 nerite snails, and then wandered over to Allie and Ben. Allie had fallen in love with some Banggai cardinalfish. They are very attractive little fish that sort of hover in the water column. Very cool! Allie really wanted the Banggai to be her fish for the tank, but was sort of interested in getting two. They are known to be a very peaceful fish and have been successfully bred in aquariums. We decided to go ahead and try to get a male and female Banggai for the now fishless tank.

Ben then pulled me back towards the invertebrate section saying he had to show me the coral that he wanted to buy. When we got back there, he showed me a flame scallop. What a cool looking creature. The scallop was very affordable and Ben had been saving up his tokens from his chores to purchase a coral. We decided to go for it. We all left the fishstore very excited about our tank prospects. We carried with us two scarlet reef hermits, two nerite snails, two banggai cardinals, a peppermint shrimp and a flame scallop!

It took about 2-3 hours to properly acclimate everyone. They all seemed to be doing great when they were added to the tank except for one of the nerites. It immediately flipped onto its shell. We had seen this before with a turbo snail. Something was definitely wrong with this snail and it was unlikely to make it. :(