Something ID - pics

J

jtZoo

New member
So I was cleaning out my filter chamber on my 28g Nanocube last night and I found these things on the back.

CRW_2250.jpg


The 'bubbles' are a jelly like consistency and fairly firm. Yea I poked one and it just gave a little, it didn't pucture. It looks like there is somthing in those little bubbles, but I just can't tell what.

Here's a few more pics. This makes me wish I had a better camera with a macro lens ;) Any ideas? Should I leave them?

CRW_2251.jpg


CRW_2245.jpg
 
Will take a wild arse guess or two, maybe tunicates? although I would have expected to see an opening or two. The "things" inside it look to be internal organs? Second best worst guess, maybe juvenile snails? I know, big help hey...lol

Chuck
 
Glad to see I'm not the only one. I do have higher res shots available (~5M) that I can email to anyone that wants a better view. I just haven't decided if I like photobucket enough to pay for it yet.

Additional info:
The sizes vary quite a bit in the picture, but the largest one is roughly between 0.25" - 0.5" wide (we can call it 3/8ths until I find a ruler) and about 0.25" tall.

All of the 'capsules' / 'bubbles' / 'thingies' have the same looking internal components a dark reddish brown circle connected to a white colored tube, and a light brown piece as well.

My wild arse guess is some sort of eggs / hatched young type thing. If I go down this path though I get confused real quick, what could get though my overflow skimmer teeth (<0.25" spacing) and attach these things to the back compartment? Not my pair of clownfish, or my single cleaner shrimp. I doubt any of my dozen snails(the largest of which is an Astrea) would figure out how to make that trip. Which leaves "everybody else" that lives in my sand bed. Brittle stars, worms, some clams, pods, and who knows what else that I didn't put in there!

Not sure if any of that information helps.
 
The only other thing that I have ever seen that remotely looks like what you have shown are bacterial masses. Could what we assume to be internal organs simply be detrital matter that bacteria are feeding upon? I get a similiar "jelly" mess on my carbon filter's sponge but are a golden brown color and not so clear as what you have shown. Maybe a Chrysophyte sp. as there are clear colored species as well.

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/chromista/chrysophyta.html

You know this is driving me nuts right?...lol

Chuck
 
Well I happen to be married to a microbiologist(working on her masters right now)...so I am going to scrape one of those bad boys off tomorrow and send it into the lab with her. Hopefully she will be able to get a better idea of what the stuff inside the jelly looks like.

She's going to bring her digital point and shoot to see if she can get some pics through the viewfinder.

If it wasn't summer time she would be able to track down a professor, but there's not many people on campus right now.

I'll post an udate tomorrow evening. Is there a 'more appropriate' (or high traffic) forum I should have posted this in?
 
P.S. I read through that link. There is a chance that the jelly is a colony of Chrysophyta, or a similar species. I will have my wife look at just some jelly as well to see if there is any real internal structure.
 
What do they look like under water? 'Cause that's what my aiptasia looks like when it's protecting itself from the open air.

(Hi Chuck!)
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12753250#post12753250 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by "Umm, fish?"
What do they look like under water?
Click to expand...

Good question! This is on the back of my filter cartridge (for lack of a better word) in the back chamber of my Nanocube 28g, which is about 3" off of a wall...so here's the best I could do with my camera. Turns out mid-level digital cameras don't do well shooting into moving water with a black background...go figure. I circled one that I verified the location by eye after the photo.

CRW_2254-1.jpg


I was able to shine a light up the back and they look the same to my eye in and out of the water. Well let me rephrase that a little, they look to be extended the same amount in and out of the water.

charlesr1958,

The wife wants to wait and bring home a petri dish and some slides before I start cutting things up (pppsshh to doing things the right way I say!) So we compromised and she will be bringing in a sample tomorrow, and if she can't get any good visuals she'll bring home all the necessary gear and try again on tuesday.
 
So the non-answer goes like this:

The outer skin was definately a membrane. When I cut it off there wasn't jelly inside but a fluid that spilled out with the consistency of water.

Under a microscope the outer membrane consisted of clear cells, the colored pieces inside were too dense to get any good imagery from. My wife wasn't able to get a good picture through the lens of the microscope because the camera kept trying to refocus. She also couldn't get access to the cooler 'toys', I mean, scientific instruments.

Which leads to the overwhelming conclusion of:

"Err, dunno. Let's watch and see if something hatches." Or as wife responded eariler today "it's muticellular, sea life." Damn biologists :)

Kylekinder,

I do have many different types of snails, but no turbos. These 'thingies' are about the same size as the shells on the majority of my snails. Besides, how'd they get back there to lay them in the first place?

At any rate I'll keep my eye on them during my regular maintinance and post updates if anything interesting happens.
 
Followup:

The wife tracked down a Marine Biologist (and fellow reefer) on campus and showed him one of the pictures. This of course sparked his interest so I cut another one of the bubbles off and passed it on.

He looked at it under his microscope (different magnification and light source) and declared with certainty that it is definitely alive, and definitely a larval stage.

The outer 'shell' is composed of a ton of cells, but what's inside is what's cool. Under his microscope they watched the thing trap suspended particles and consume it. (I of course was at work and only got to hear the stories!!! ):mad: To paraphrase the statement went something like "The organism is composed of a few larger structures and enveloped with a multitude of cilia which it used to trap suspended food particles."

His best guess is that it is a larval state of a larger species of copeopod, he was going to hunt through his text books to see if he could find anything close. In the mean time I'm going to keep doing what I was doing and we'll see what develops.
 
Yeah tell me about it! That was the first thing I asked, "Did you get any pictures???" And she said no, they tried but it was just a big ball of fuzz.

On a side note I noticed a few more of those sacs just forming so it looks like whatever is spawning is still back there. I might try to schedule a trip into the lab with a SLR camera to see everything first hand and see if I can get any photos. Probably won't happen for a few weeks though.

I'll post anything new. This is really cool.
 
i have those things also, i figured they were snail eggs. the rock was from a 15yr old tank so i figured they would be alot of funky stuff in there- i ripped alot of it off because i was getting rid of bubble algae. i have noticed a large increase in amphiopod population ( mostly juveniles) let me know what it is!
 
Nothing really. Been busy at work, you know the usual. Although you just reminded me that I need to change out my carbon. I will go poke that marine biologist as well, see if he's done any research.

I will try to get some updated pictures tonight! (Don't expect anything before 9pm PST though)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

NancyT3
Thankful for Dr Reefs QT Fish, Hooked on invertebrates....
Replies
2
Views
651
griss
griss
T
Where to get live rock - not just bare cured rock?
2
Replies
21
Views
2K
scottysnowmass
S
T
Clownfish ID
Replies
3
Views
443
criccio
criccio
M
How everything change and keeps changing
2
Replies
33
Views
4K
kingone
K
D
From too much dusting on the glass, to a lush dark green cyano carpet....
Replies
4
Views
641
Vinny Kreyling
Vinny Kreyling
Back
Top