New Inhabitants from a friends tank

A guy from my job and his new wife are moving across country, and they weren't able to bring the tank contents of her 12gal Nano cube. For a fair price, here's what I acquired:

• 1x Toadstool leather (Sarcophyton sp.) about 3" tall
  
• 1x Yellow Stripe Maroon Clown (Premnas biaculeatus)
  
• 2x Peppermint shrimp (Lysmata wurdemanni) - will eat Aiptasia spp., but have been known to nip "clams, corals, and other cnidarians", keep well in pairs or groups and will reproduce.
• 2x Scarlet Hermits (Paguristes cadenati)
• He thought there might be some "real" snails, possibly a Bumble Bee Snail, but all I saw were a couple 1/4" mystery snails
• 4x Yellow and 1x Orange Sun Corals - not looking so good - apparently needs direct feeding (Tubastrea sp., or Epitonium sp.)
  
• 3x Smooth red Mushrooms (Zoanthids)
• 3x Smooth green Mushrooms (Zoanthids)

• 2x colonies of Brown Button Polyps w/ white centers (Zoanthids), one 3" across, one 1" across
  
• 1x Large (10") Green Brittle Star (Class Ophiuroidea) - I suspect when I find this in my tank next I'll snag it and trade it in at the LFS as it may chow on my smaller fish.
  
• Botryocladia spp. red algea - mostly juvenile
• 1/2" Tan Starfish (Class Asteroidea) - this wasn't mentioned and I only happened on him.
  

As a bonus I get the powerhead and another 5gal bucket.

The process:

They were removed from the tank and placed into a 5gal "travel" bucket with approximately 3gal of water in San Diego about 11pm Sunday night, and and transfered by car to our job site in El Segundo starting 3:30AM Monday morning. He placed them in my office and setup the powerhead. I took possesion of them around 8am, and placed an arm desk lamp over them - the lights not appropriate really but the Button Polyps seemed to respond.

I left work with them about 2:30am, and once home re-started the powerhead.

I performed a 2.5 gal water change - removed about 1/2 cup of algea (and "saved" 4 tiny stars, but lost at least one). I added 2.5gal of NSW to the water I removed from the tank and then dripped this into the "travel" bucket:

• 3:40pm - at 5gal mark
• 4:35pm - at 4gal mark - took 1/2gal out of the "travel" bucket
• 5:30pm - at 3gal mark - took 3/4gal out
• 6:30pm - at 2gal mark - took 1gal out
• 8:00pm - at 1/2gal mark - took 2gal out, added last 1/2gal

At 8:30pm started reviewing, selecting, and placing new inhabitants. Used a rock hammer to bust up a number of rocks to keep the selections small, as I don't need more Live Rock. I pulled out a bunch of the brown Kelp algea (including a 2" Bristle worm) to make room. Used the last half of my Aquarium Systems/Marineland HoldFast for the new inhabitants, plus 3x LR frags for the Xenia.

Finished 10pm. I was delighted to find I had no fatalities. So they were out of a real tank for almost 24 hrs.

Full Tank view with new additions:


Close-up of various new organisms:

The leftovers include:

• Quite a bit of Live Rock
• A couple small frags of Button and other Polyps
• 1 1/2cup of brown Kelp algea
• 2 large rock anemones (Aiptasia)

All this will go back to the LFS and see what credit I can get for it.

I turned off the "mid day" lights and will re-introduce them slowly as the the 12g Nano had only 48W of light (4W/gal, 40W/Sq.Ft.), and mine has 118W (4.9W/gal, 60W/Sq. Ft.).

Hair worm (Spionids Polychaete Worm):


SPS (possibly Porites?) with growing polyp colony (Order Zoanthidea/Zoanthids):