Mythbusting the hobby: an inquiry into experience?

[Sk8r]

1. re bubble algae: I maintain that telling people not to pop the bubbles because it spores that way and yet to get a mithrax crab to eat them (how does it eat them without popping them?) is kinda odd.
a) first of all---is the contents of the bubble full of spores and does the bubble reproduce this way.

2. re vermetid snails: admittedly they can get pretty thick, but I'm not aware they sting. I hear plenty about them 'stinging' coral; 'harassing' coral; 'annoying' corals. Actually, I've had sps and lps, softies, and vermetids quite thick, and never seen this behavior, nor am I convinced they have nematocysts. Any good info?

3. re eggcrate grid causing dirt to gather under rocks: having pulled mine for a move, I didn't find any such. I maintain a crew of nassarius...this has seemed enough, but I have a light bioload. Any experience with a situation such as black deposit, etc?

4. importance of mega-skimmers with lps.
I'm really on the other side of the fence with this. I think having a skimmer at all is probably a good thing, but I get really good lps growth with a middle-of-the-road skimmer. Seems to me a really good skimmer is nice with sps, but may be self-defeating with lps.

Just tossing these out there for general input.

 

[spamreefnew]

#1. used to pop them all the time and they still went away

#4. I don't run any skimmer now and my corals have never looked better. In fact I only have one little sps frag (elkhorn looking thing) that used to sit in the back of the tank bleached and not growing covered with algae,,after removing the skimmer it colored right up and after replacing my lighting last week it has doubled in size and my hammer coral grows like a weed

 

[greenbean36191]

1) They do reproduce by release of zoospores and cytoplasmic spheres, so rupturing the bubble (which is a single cell) could cause them to spread. Mithrax crabs have to rupture the bubbles to eat the algae, so can contribute to their spread. See this paper for more about the efficacy of Mithrax in bubble algae control: http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=20139303

AFAIK, the only animal that can eat bubble algae without popping the cells is a sea slug called Erkolania, which lives inside the bubbles as it feeds. So far no one knows how it pulls off the trick of getting inside the bubble without popping it.

2) No, vermetid snails don't have nematocysts and don't sting corals. Aside from cnidarians (corals, anemones, jellyfish, and hydroids) the only animals that have nematocysts are slugs that feed on cnidarians and steal their nematocysts for their own use. However, vermetids can irritate corals and reduce their growth rates as well as make their skeletons brittle in cases where the coral overgrows the snail. There are a lot of papers on this subject, but here's a recent one that's available for free: http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/05/18/rsbl.2010.0291.full

The other two are more subjective, so I'll let someone else battle those out.

 

[Sk8r]

Thank you, Greenbean: I was hoping you'd answer. I do note that the study involved only sps, and quite a whopper of a vermetid; montipora wasn't discommoded greatly, but porites was...but, yes, it seems possible there's some sort of chemical interaction going on beyond just the contact with the mucus, give or take overgrowing a vermetid shell is going to affect the coral's stability. So that one seems supported, at least as regards sps. And they do multiply fast.

And spores, yes, check, in the bubble contents. I'm not surprised. I think it was Bertoni who said "Learn to think of bubble as an interesting texture."

Thanks! just wanted to get the straight info! We pass on too much without actually checking it out.