Vermetid snails?

[Alysiak00]

First off, I don't have a pic....YET. I'm at school and will be home in 30min. But its been bugging me for a few days, i noticed these little purplish/red tubes protruding from the rock next to one of my corals. with further research it looks to be vermetid snails (i think!). anyhoos, are they good or bad because i've gotten mixed results from almost every site i visit. TIA

 

[beanoil]

If they are vermetids, they're bad--unbeleivably bad. I brought in two on a hammer coral frag a year or so ago. I didn't know what they were and I thought they looked cool so I left them alone. Now I have 1-2 thousand of the things. They are everywhere, including inside my plumbing. During a recent cleaning, I realized that they're inside my skimmer and return pumps. Forget irritating corals, which they do, now that they're causing issues with my plumbing, I have to break down the tank. There's a well respected guy on here named Hop who had to break down a 300 (I think) for the same problem. Everyone will tell you to manually remove them or superglue them closed. That's fine if you only have a few. If they get to plague proportions, they're a big problem. Good luck.

 

[R2E2]

+1
I hate the things. They grow everywhere, I have had them grow on a float switch and interfere with the switch. They grow on and even through corals. I have a monti cap and a pavona that had them growing right up and through them.
I read somewhere that emerald crabs may eat them. I haven't tested it yet, but considering I have thousands of them, it's worth a shot.

 

[mutateddogbone]

i have been living with them for over 2 years now and have no problems, other than getting finger poked with moving rocks around.

if you control the amount of food floating through your water column, they wont spread very fast, if at all. they are filter feeders after all, and if they have nothing to filter they do not spread.

 

[OrionN]

I just use a hypodermic needle and inject some kalk paste into it. Kill rate is 100%. They don't bother me but in some case I wanted to kill one or two due to where they are.
In fact, inject kalk into anything with a syringe have a kill rate of 100%. These snails can't move and are very easy target.

 

[Alysiak00]

That's a good idea

 

[Alysiak00]

Well, i finally attempted to get some pictures and i believe its time for an underwater hd cam lol. Heres the best i could do with the old 8mp.

Theres three on this frogspawn (i don't know if its a peach frogspawn or just bleached from being irritated from the snails?)

Theres one on this frag plug on the left

 

[mutateddogbone]

def. looks like vermetids to me. i see you have a lot of cyano and rock dusters. like i said in previous post, if you get your food and nutrients under control, they will stop spreading

 

[Alysiak00]

Still fairly fresh tank. Only 3 months old

 

[lordofthereef]

I had plenty of these guys in my nano. As with most things, if they don't get out of control they should be fine. The most annoying thing about them is how quickly they can slice a finger open if you are moving rock (just from being punctured by that thin, long, hard tube). There are plenty of fish that will be happy to eat them too. I'd look into that before tryng to manually irradicate them all. Unless of course you only have one or two.

 

[Alysiak00]

I only see 5 total and they haven't spread in this tank or the last one. Also the feather dusters look out of control because that's the bottom rock of my old 20

 

[OrionN]

If you don't want them just kill them now. It really easy. Kalk or just plug them up with epoxy. Two part epoxy will do just fine. When you bother them, they retracted into the tube, just put epoxy in there and that is that for that snail.

 

[skibum9884]

Anyone know of any fish that will eat these? I've heard copperbands will, but we all know how hard it is to keep those doing well!

I'm wondering if any of the Prognathodes butterflies would be good for it. I'm guessing not as they don't have the long "beak" like the copperband.

I also have a bunch of these I'd like to get rid of.

 

[Alysiak00]

I don't have any kalk paste but i did cover 3 of them with my super glue gel lol. I broke of the stem then put a nice glob over the stem spot. Also i'm one of the unlucky people who can't have a sump, so i'm using a canister. This picture was taken RIGHT before i did the water change. the cyano is a marker for when i need a wc lol.