I'm told my new feather-duster is trying to reproduce...

[shannonredburn]

So yesterday I go out and purchase a few new pieces of live rock and a feater duster. Small tank -12g. and to put in the new piece of lr I have to take it all down and put it back together. It was the biggest piece in there and I wanted it for the roof of a cave. Turned out pretty cool. But as I was putting it all back in (even put back in the same water, I'd saved it in a couple of buckets, this spider webby stuff started appearing. It was massive and got all over everything. It was so bad that when I was siphoning the strings out the shrimp would come and stand under the hose and let me suck the stuff off of their legs and antennaes. every few minutes it would come back and in the process of an hour I had to siphon half a gallon of water (and goo) out of my tank 5 times. I panicked cause I got the feather duster on a lr from a show tank that I saw a cucumber in and I was worried 1 might have hitch hiked. The lfs said that was unlikely and that it was probably the feather duster emitting sperm.
It cleared up and everything seems normal. Levels are all the same, no spikes.
What I want to know is what could it be and how do I prevent it.

Oh yeah - I have a pair of blue green cromis and a variety of hermit crabs, snails and a few corals and now the feather duster. They are all behaving normal.

TIA
shannon

 

[MT79]

Sounds more like spaghetti worms, vermetid gastropod, or something similar. They will secret a mucus strand to catch dirt/detritus when the tank is disturbed. They are good critters to have, they help keep things clean. Populations rise and fall w/ the amount of food available. here is a link to a thread w/ a pic of a vermatid gastropod so you can get an idea-

http://www.aquariumadvice.com/viewtopic.php?p=799474&highlight=hauling+catch#799474

 

[shannonredburn]

Some of these strands were like 9 or 10 inches when they caught each other and twined together. I've seen a few worm looking things in the ls but nothing big enough to secrete what I saw. I'm not sure what a spaghetti worm is but my 12 year old neighbor says she's not gonna eat spagetti any more if that's what's gonna happen to her


so i took a look at the other posts/pics and that looks like a small version of what I had

thanks

and I definately am salivating over whatever camera took those shots

thanks again

 

[MT79]

Here is a pic of the tentacles of a spaghetti worm-
http://www.aquariumadvice.com/photopost/showphoto.php?photo=5098&cat=500&ppuser=5514

 

[shannonredburn]

that little ugly dude in first pics must have gotten the shock of his life cause he about reeled in my entire 12g nano. lol. what a holiday feast tummy ache he would have had!!