Tank has finally reached that "Oh Wow" phase...

[Ram_Puppy]

well, other than getting some frags from sam and Ba, I have not had much time to look at my tanks the last few weeks, I have been working some insane 80 hour weeks and sleep has been most important, so, I sleep, and enjoy my little cube at work while doing maintenance chores only on the one at home.

I finally sat down and stared for a couple hours last night and noticed a few things:

My amphipod and copepod population has crashed, I was told to expect that, so I am not worried, though, I have a feeling the PJ cardnials had a hand in eradicating them. No worries, i have some going in another tank.

So far the few bristleworms I have seen are the super small thin 'grey ones', now i have noticed about three or four that are a little thicker, like pencil lead, and are red, then purple, then red again. Very pretty. Don't look like fireworms, so I am not worried.

I was getting ready to purchase some spaghetti worms and micro-stars from ipfs when last night Low and behold, I noticed a few long thin tendrils popping out of a hold in a rock.. yup... I am pretty sure that is a spaghetti worm. And when I fed the pj's and the nassarius snails came out, low and behold, one of them had a mini-star stuck to his shell with a few pieces of gravel.. NICE!

To top the evening off, My tank is populated with trochus snails, which I heard don't breed readily in the tank, (I only have one turbo and no other types of turban) Guess what! Baby snails all over the place. Shell is wrong for nassarius, the only thing I can think of, is I did a sand swap on reef central a few months ago, and most of this stuff may have come from that in 'embryonic' form... I also added about 8 pounds of lalo live rock to the tank recently as well, as well as stuff from sams tanks. There is litterally an explosion of diversity going on, and I am getting really stoked! I wish I had my camera!

ONly down side, is I noticed an aptasia growing on the bottom of a plate coral and reaching out to get some light. HE will be toast saturday afternoon.

Couple questions? I have seen some organisms that look like the 'arm' of a little sea star poking out of rocks, last night when I fed the tank, a few even popped out of my little field of star polyps... is this some type of worm that stays anchored in a hole? never seen them before and they resemble a bristle worm but definatley don't act like one.

Also, I think this may have been a baby snail, but not sure, it was a small cone shapped shell, about the size of a pencil eraser (which holds true to the other baby snails I saw) but where the other baby snails were just moving shell, this one actually had a 'mantle' of flesh that extended around it equally in all directions, and looked 'feathered' if that makes sense, when a bristle worm cralwed over it, the mantle popped in real fast like a polyp closing up, came back out. It stayed in the same place all night and didn't move, but is not there this morning... just a baby snail acting a little different ya think?

[R_S_C]

here's a good site to answer most of those questions.

http://www.reefs.org/hhfaq/pages/mai.../faq_rock2.htm

[alexwolf]

Those cone snails, I hope theyre not the small white ones. Those are predatory. I really dont understand what they do, but i know they can get under clam mantles. Maybe someone else will jump in.

[Ram_Puppy]

RSC, thanks, I had been there before but hadn't visited in a while... looks like the unidentified snail like critter is a keyhole limpet, I also found a Vermetid gastropod, the red and purple bristle worms are of course nice and common beneficials (pretty much knew they would be) and the mini-stars and spaghetti worms match up perfectly. only thing that I can't find is my one tentacled guys poking out of rocks... look like bristle worms but are stationary and appear to be some type of filter feeder. I am excited about all this diversity.

I have also decided that I am going to make a stop at a tidepool on my vacation in south padre at the end of july and grab some sand and algae and put it in a 10 gallon tank to see what happens.

[JimD]

Pyramid snails, they resemble a grain of rice and will predate on clams and snails and will be present at the mantle/shell edge. 6 line wrasses will sometimes control them, manual removal is best.

[Ram_Puppy]

Jim, sorry I am a little dumb, what are you saying is the pyramid snail? so far nothing I have seen is misbehaving. I did a quick google search on pyramid snails and didn't find anything, I searched wet web media and found something on Pyram snails, is that what you are talking about?

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/tridacdisfaqs.htm

Nothing in my tank looks like that, I am pretty sure the two mobile shelled invertebrates I have I have positively identified as a keyhole limpet, which needs to be watched in and of itself (known to eat sponge and coraline) and baby trochus, The latter I got a real good look at and I am 99.9999% positive.

[alexwolf]

Yeah thats them. I have some on my Squamosa, the 6 lines seem to get them. What I dont understand is the damage they do.

[JimD]

Try this,
www.clamsdirect.com/phpbb2/viewforum.php?f=2
They bore into the shell and will kill the clam/snail if not controlled.

[Ram_Puppy]

I believe I read that The guy who owns clams direct manually removed the pests and kept the clams in quarantine until he was sure all was well.