Increasing biodiversity

[Drewbaby]

I've got a 180 gallon aquarium that has been setup for a little over a year and a half. It's been a slow start. The rock I bought has been in established tanks for over 10 years but came with flatworms. I don't think they were the harmful coral eating kind but at the time I didn't want to find out. I bought a few scooter blennies and set them loose on the buffet. 3 months later with no additional food source the tank had no sign of flatworms. The blennies were re-homed, I started running the lights and now more then a year later I've only added 4 small fish to keep bioload minimal because of my schedule.

My problem is I don't see much life on and among the rocks. No critters running around. My 55 reef is loaded with all kids of neat stuff. I have sponges growing, all kinds of pods, several types of beneficial worms, misc. Snails that weren't introduced but are in there and growing. Is there anything out there that I can add to the 180 to up the biodiversity. I know some people will argue the point of having a tank so clean it would pass hospital standards, but I like seeing the life. To me it shows that there is enough going on to support the many stages of life, big and small.

[Misled]

Move a couple pieces or rock and some sand from the 55 to the 180. It will take some time, but the life will come. I swap sand and rubble rock with local reefers to keep the diversity going.

[DJREEF]

GARF, Inland Aquatics, IPSF, and others sell diversity inoculation kits. Just do a search with sandbed kit, or refugium starter kit.

DJ

[scubasteve06]

Reef Nutrition has Tigger Pods and Arcti Pods you could add, and I also added something called Reef Pods to my fuge along with tigger pods about 2 weeks ago to my system because I wasn't seeing hardly any activity in my fuge and I wanted to fatten up my mandarin and red scooter blenny. I can honestly say 2 weeks later that my sand in the fuge moves everytime I look at like it is crawling with little ants. There are pods all over my rubble rock zone I have created in the fuge and my mandarin is starting to fatten up. The red scooter blenny I have eats mysis shrimp so I have no problems with his weight, just the mandarin that I bought because it was so skinny. It had been in the LFS for over a year in a depleted 20L and it was quite sad to see him so skinny and hardly moving. He has gotten much more active in my tank and is all over the rocks and sand now hunting all day long for pods.

[whorulz1147]

I can personally attest to Inland aquatics and IPSF. Especially the Detrivore starter kit form Inland. A+ and all that....