raiding the 65

[treesprite]

I guess tonight I'll be raiding my 65 for snails to take to work.

 

The snails in the 16g have disappeared and the only thing I can think of that might have killed them is either the hermits or the very high swing in salinity I had a month ago. I see things with shells moving around... it turns out that they are all hermits.

 

I didn't realize that the snails are all gone until yesterday, when I noticed some kind of lfilamentous-looking stuff. Today I've got loooooong strands of the stuff coming off of the rocks - a couple of the strands look like 4 inches long. I've never seen anything like it, but am assuming it's some kind of long filamentous algae that the snails usually keep from growing. Ugly stuff.

[smarsh97]

that sounds like dinoflagellates and I read somewhere that snails are sensitive to them.

 

Sandy

[treesprite]

that sounds like dinoflagellates and I read somewhere that snails are sensitive to them.

 

Sandy

 

I will have to look up dinoflagelletes I guess. I don't know where they would have come from.

[treesprite]

I can't find a picture of them anywhere. If anyone has one, I would appreciate seeing it.

 

This stuff is not growing in the fuge/sump section of the tank, which is nothing more than an end of the tank sectioned off with clear plexiglass with overflow teeth in it. THere's a lot of macroalgae crammed in that small space.

 

I don't know if this would have anything to do with it, but last week I re-arranged the liverock.

 

So, how would such a thing get into a tank where it's never been seen?

[davelin315]

Forrest, dinoflagellates are a natural part of a maturing tank. They are brownish slimy protoctists that are also photosynthetic. They are almost always present to some degree, but they don't surface typically until after a few months. They run their cycle and then they are gone. They can be toxic to snails as some species eat them and then promptly die. There is not much out there that will eat them, either, although some crabs and a select few snails do. Other than that, vacuum and remove, change water, and keep the nutrients down.

[treesprite]

i read a whole bunch of stuff on getting rid of it. I found a snail before I left work. There actually were only like 5 to start with, so there are 3 MIA.

 

Would stronger light contribute to the sudden bloom? I didn't get new bulbs, but I replaced the glass cover for the tank a few days ago because the one I was using was pretty much white and clouded over and couldn't be cleaned and I knew it was blocking out a lot of light.

[treesprite]

I left the lights off Thurs, Fri, and Sat. Since the tank is at work, I couldn't check until today... the stuff appears to be gone. Hopefully it won't come back.

[treesprite]

I don't think this stuff was dinoflagelletes - everything I read said they are extremely difficult to get rid of - I left my lights off for 3 days and after more than a week the stuff has still not come back. I still have those bad kind of onyx tongas in the tank but I don't know what happened to the other snails.