Barnacles

[itafx]

Last summer, we had a family vacation at a mid Atlantic coast beach. We brought home some barnacles on a small piece of driftwood. It's neat to watch their little feeding appendages come out and forage for microscopic food in the water. Are barnacles benifical in a SW tank ecosystem? Harmful? Don't matter?

[Ziggy953]

Hmm...well adding anything to your tank directly from the ocean poses problems. You could easily add something that has parasites or other issues that will affect your tank.

Whether they are good or bad for the tank I don't know.

[roka64]

I agree with Allen. I don't think they will harm the tank, but they are probably used to colder water than most of our tanks.

[MarineFlake]

From what I have read, you wouldn't really be able to sustain them due the fact that they get their food from the water column. While corals feed this way, barnacles get much larger and require more food. My guess that if didn't die from temperature (As pointed out above) it would eventually starve (and probably foul your tank from all the feedings in the process). Another issue is that they reproduce en masse. Once they affix themselves to something, they do not come off...easily, and they reproduce in large numbers as a protection mechanism. From what I read, I think this would not be a very tank friendly addition.

Happy reefing