baby feather dusters? sorry no pic

[palmero]

Ill say right now My tank has not been set up for a couple yrs but i was curious if anyone could tell me what this was.


I had a 55gal reef tank and along the way popped up these little tiny white looking tubs about 1/8 inch long (very very tiny) and something coming out. Now i did have a couple of feather dusters in there at one point so maybe it was just baby featherdusters. the thing is they were showing up EVERYWHERE on rocks, return lines, glass and now the sump!

The sump was at the bottom of the closet little light. There were just soo manyof these things i finally shut it down. If it is a common thing when having a reef tank to have thing pop up like that then i understand. But i should also say i had about 10 little hermit crabs and i think 5-6 snails. Was that not enough to keep the population under control??

 

[MantisFreak]

Without a picture, it's hard to say. However, it sounds to me like vermited snails. They grow a calcareous tube and then send a mucus net out. The net is sticky and food particles stick to it. Then they reel the net in and eat what got stuck to it.

Here is a quicktime video on macro that shows one eating. http://www.mbayaq.org/video/video_snailnet_feeding_qt.asp

 

[Fluff]

Sounds like serpulids. Tiny feather dusters and yes, they are pretty common. They scrape off very easily. Snails won't bother then and I'm pretty sure, hermits ignore them as well.

 

[palmero]

i would say serpulids look closer. Again they were extremley tiny and didnt really seem to grow anymore than 1/8 inch. they were white and very sharp! If they grew on rocks they could grow flush with the rock straight up and out from the rock. You could break them off but if i ever took out a rock and those things were on there i would have to be carefull cause they were so sharp about the thickness of a thumbtack.

They were all over these rock i have never seen in a nice looking reef tank and was thinking that it was not good if it has been growing in my tank.

 

[Fluff]

Actually, both the serpulids and vermetid are harmless to your tank. One is a filter feeder and one is a detrius consumer which is actually beneficial to your system.

 

[Oafboy182]

thats sounds like what I was going to ask about. Here is a pic

 

[Fluff]

Oafboy, what you have are q-tip sponges. Another harmless filter feeder.

 

[Oafboy182]

Thanks Fluff