Valonia zero, pithos one!

Well, I really should’ve taken detailed pics of my tank before I decided to try a different herbivore to rid myself of valonia (aka bubble algae), but ultimately, I just wanted to clear the tank of the stuff. In the past I would use female emerald crabs, as they tend to be slightly less aggressive and don’t nip at corals as much as the males, at least that’s been my experience. I’ve always heard that pitho crabs were much better and don’t have a wandering spirit that their counterparts have. The one thing that I’ve always heard about pithos, is that they’re a little more delicate and often don’t ship well. Being that my tank was going through a fallow period, I needed something to eat the stuff, but couldn’t use a trusty one spot foxface, which is always my go to for valonia, tank size permitting. So I had Elliot from Golden State corals pick me up some, roughly 12-14 total to start. A couple didn’t make it past a couple days, but the rest were pretty active. I wanted to pick up some on the wholesaler field trip, but Rita didn’t have any, so I had to wait another week or two before I could add more. I think total when all was said and done, I had about 12-14 leftover. To give the little dudes a head start, I performed the stab and siphon method to reduce the total amount of valonia on two different occasions. Despite my efforts, there was still a lot leftover that I couldn’t get out and that’s where these little dudes did their job. A couple weeks had past and I wasn’t paying attention to the tank (I wasn’t cleaning the glass or anything) then I decided to take a closer look and I couldn’t find any algae on the rocks or any place these little dudes could reach, they completely demolished any trace of valonia and some random algae that came with the Fiji live rock. The clam shells were also spotless, so with a little tender care and maybe a few extra, I completely endorse these little guys as herbivore monsters. I have one crappy pic that shows the valonia covering the rock towards the back and then a pic I took last week of the Shazam and you can see that it’s spotless. I really wished that I took more pics to document their efforts. Oh well. But I would pick pitho crabs over emeralds all day long. In fact, I have some rocks that are covered in my son’s tank, so maybe I’ll document that journey in order to repeat their success again. Pitho crabs for the win!