They're Alive!

First, a little bit of backstory:

Last weekend was probably one of the worst in my life. It certainly holds no water (pun to be self-explanatory later) to the weekend where one of my best friends' life hung in the nether world betwixt life and death, but it came decently close enough to qualify.

We had gone to L.A. for the weekend to attend my best friend's mother's funeral. That, in itself, was devasting. En route, our rental car broke down on the edges of beautiful Buttonwillow. The gas station attendents were extremely nice; so were the Enterprise reps. But 4 hours in the middle of nowhere with a little stiff wind blowing will entice the bacteria in one's body to act up, which they did. The next day, both Bratworse and I were deep in misery. That very night, I spewed all over.

The drive home was relatively uneventful; however, as I opened our front door, instead of being greeted by a nice waterfall sound, we were greeted by angry buzzing noises that didn't sound muffled by water at all. We dashed in to find an empty 40-gallon tank with pumps and filter still running.

Luckily for us and unluckily for our next door neighbor, the water had run away from our unit into theirs. We paid for all the damages of course, but all the live rock were dead and so were the live sand, which was the most expensive investment we had put into the aquarium.

Not only that, but I figured the 50+ blue legged hermit crabs which I had purchased the week before (to help cycle the tank as well as provide nourishment for Ossie the Octopus) were goners for sure.

First three days after the trip, I hadn't the heart to work on the tank. Finally last night, I went and got buckets to put the live rock in, as well as the sand. After removing the rocks, I was about to start on the sand when I blinked and could've sworn I saw something moving among the sand. I blinked again and sure enough, little tiny movements could be seen.

Lo and behold! 20+ crabs survived the drying out of the tank. I scooped them up and threw them into Ossie's tiny tank hoping for the best. We observed Ossie hanging outside her den but not much more. Since she had inked and seemed shy after we had taken that flash photography, we're not anxious to put more stress on her. Hopefully, she likes her new temporary tank mates.