Aquarist Hypochondriasis

[redfishbluefish]

With two recent posts on flatworms and one on red bugs, I have been overly vigilant in searching the tank for these little creatures. So very late last night I turn on the blue LEDs and the tank is covered with hundreds of very small white little spots….covering the glass and rocks. Didn’t really see any on any of the corals, but I did go to bed thinking that I now had flatworms…Acoel Flatworms to be exact. This morning I removed a couple of these white dots and examined them under a magnifying lens. By the way, once the lights come on, all these guys disappear. To my delight I found very small snails. Here’s a poor picture that was taken with a point-n-shoot camera looking through the magnifying lens:

Now all I need to do is identify the type of snail.

 

[Hawkeye]

colonista...that's what they look like to me. Very common and afaik - reef safe.

 

[redfishbluefish]

Phil, so what you are saying is that these are some hitchhiker snail that I picked up from someone. I’ve only introduced dwarf cerith, florida cerith, limpets, nassarius, Stomatella, nerite, zigzag periwinkle, and Mexican turbos. I was thinking that these were babies of either the nerite or turbos, based solely on the similar shell shapes…….WAIT…..


As I was typing the above I was also searching colonista snails, and I think you are, once again, correct….a common hitchhiker that breeds like rabbits and come out at night and look like mini-turbos….never get big. Man, I have somewhere in the range of 300 of these things that I could see.

Thanks Phil

 

[Hawkeye]

yep - they will come in waves. I noticed mine decreased in number after I added more snails. Initially when I go my LR i has a lot of these.