what are these

[scuba_steve]

after a month or two after getting my new snails (turbos) i now have 100 or so of what seem to be the beginning of mabe new snails all over the place mostly on the glass !! they are white and in a spiral pattern with a small looking hole in the center about the size of a pencil tip some bigger than others though !!! the look like what reefrunner has on the rocks next to his new frag in this pic !! are these the beginning of new baby snails?? read that turbos are hard if at all possible to bread ?!?!? if there not snails what are they ??

[BillyZ]

moved to Identification Forum

[ReefLady]

I think what you are referring to are spirorbid polychaetes. Basically small feather dusters, however, they won't get any bigger than what you are seeing now. They aren't really "babies", but a type of small tube worm/duster.

Here's a pic:



They are harmless filter feeders. You tend to see a ton of them, then they sporadically dissapear. More common in newer tanks (though I'm not sure why).

There's some info. on them in this article:

Reefkeeper's Guide to Invertebrate Zoology: Part 10: Sedentary Polychaetes, Con't.

See the section on Spirorbidae

HTH!

[scuba_steve]

thanks thats exactly what they look like !!! very very cool will do more reading thanks for the help

[echo7]

i have them too, i think they might be benificial by provididng extra filtration, but then again their competition for filter feeding corals and feather dusters. does anyone know something that would eat them, but not anything like corals or other types of feather dusters or other things with hard shells?

[cmor1701d]

Thanks for that photo RL. I was gonna post a pic and ask what they are, but can't get a good shot.