Cyano on my sand bed is gone!

[TOYTEK]

Tomoko, I've heard that about Mexicans, however I've had mine for 11 months and they have been fine. Lots of babies when they were in the 55, which got as high as 83º back in August. This morning I noticed one that looked like it was dieing, funny thing is the 100 gallon runs btwn 76-78º.
BTW, glad to hear you got rid of the cyano.

 

[Tomoko Schum]

I have a few Turbo snails that have been in my tank for a long time, too. They look a lot like a Mexican Turbo, but they don't seem to eat as voraciously as the Mexican variety. Mine never seem to produce any babies (I wish they would.)

Mexican Turbo I bought 6 years ago (that was the name it came with) cleaned up darbesia and bryopsis in no time flat. Unfortunately they also finished up my small collection of Turtle grass, Gracilaria, and Botryocladia

Tomoko

 

[NicoleC]

Danny, I don't think those are baby turbo snails. Since they have a planktonic stage, the odds of them surviving the larval stage in our tanks is very small. Perhaps you have collonista snails? They look just like baby turbo snails, and serve much of the same functions.

 

[Tomoko Schum]

I was actually thinking about the same thing as Nicole. However, I recently obtained tropical Turbo snails that reproduce in captivity. They are much smaller than the regular Turbo snails, though.

Tomoko

 

[TOYTEK]

Y'all may be right. I've been trying to browse wetwebmedia's snail ID pages to find some decent pics of baby snails, but I have given up for now. One of these days DSL will be available in my area, and I wont have to wait til I get some free time at work to skim through a bunch of pics. I did read that the collonista babies were nocturnal as is/was the case with the ones I had. But I've never seen any adults. I also had what appeared to be baby Nassarius. Had at least 30 of each at one time. Haven't seen any small Nassarius since I bought the Giant Nassarius(someone told me they were carnivores), except for the one in the overflow(he's gotten huge).
I bought some "cat's eye snails"?? last weekend that are supposed to be good hair algae eaters..we'll see.
As per the lights out method Tomoko mentioned earlier, it seemed to work for me, but cyano kept coming back. Last resort chemical warfare seems to have knocked out the remaining cyano with no ill-effects. There was a thread of the month a while back on the lights out topic I'll try to dig up the link. Be careful if you have alot of SPS several people experienced RTN afterwards. Ohh crap, here I go writing a book again. I shut up now.

 

[TOYTEK]

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1078532
here's the link to the lights out thread

 

[TOYTEK]

here I go hogging another thread. Apparently I haven't looked in(studied) my tank after lights out lately. I just counted 15 or so of the baby snails. Pulled a couple out and got some picks.
I didn't compress/resize them so I'll just post links

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff178/toytek2/IMG_0222_2.jpg

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff178/toytek2/IMG_0214_2.jpg

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff178/toytek2/IMG_0224_2.jpg

and my fat lawnmower that wont eat hair algae, sitting on the veggie clip
http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff178/toytek2/IMG_0171_2.jpg

 

[NicoleC]

Those definitely look like collonistas to me. Those ARE the adults; they don't get any bigger.

The little ones that look like nassarius I have seen, too, but I don't know what they are. (Unless they are pyramellid snails.) Nassarius snails have egg capsules and free swimming larvae, so they would be unlikely to survive either. It could happen, but I am guessing it's also another snail of some kind.

Who knows what a "cat's eye" snail is. But several sites online list them as another kind of turbo grazer. I guess that could be Astraea, Turbo, Trochus, or something else even.

 

[Tomoko Schum]

Yep, they sure look like adult collonista snails to me, too.

Tomoko

 

[TOYTEK]

Thanks, ladies. Tomoko, you can have your thread back now.