TB Saltwater Hitchhikers

[lmm1967]

you got a toadfish????? Got any pictures of it?

Pic of the day the rocks arrived....

and a video of feeding time from June 2018? He's now in a 180 gallon tank - probably about time for another video as he's grown a good bit.

 

[duberii]

Pic of the day the rocks arrived....

and a video of feeding time from June 2018? He's now in a 180 gallon tank - probably about time for another video as he's grown a good bit.

Wow! How much rock did you order? Must've had a good hiding spot

 

[lmm1967]

Wow! How much rock did you order? Must've had a good hiding spot

only 60 Pounds.

Came in 2 boxes - I was just slightly startled when I saw something that large moving around in the bag - I had removed several pieces of the rock and the water was a little cloudy - so all I saw was a sizable shadow moving around.

 

[ScottB]

I've been wanting to play the bacteria game... Been considering carbon dosing recently

Do a lot of homework and go slow. S L O W E R.

This vid is a little slow in the beginning and end, but the topic really got me going down the bacteria rabbit hole.

 

[duberii]

Just making sure- these are florida ceriths?

 

[duberii]

Also found some of these- not sure what they are

 

[CuzzA]

A typical Florida cerith will have two antennae and a short vacuum cleaner looking mouth. Like this:

Some of those look like whelks or nassarius. Here's how to differentiate the two.

Whelk versus Nassarius | Melev's Reef

www.melevsreef.com

Another ID resource.

Snails, Whelks, Conchs - Gulf Specimen Marine Lab

Class Gastropoda Watch Gastropod videos on youtube.com Barnacle beast . Moon Snail close up . Whelk squirts water . Whelk Egg case . Periwinkle snail M-810 KEYHOLE LIMPET , Diodora aspera or other species A primitive uni-valve gastropod. The conical shell resembles a coolie hat. Moves freely...

gulfspecimen.org

 

[duberii]

A typical Florida cerith will have two antennae and a short vacuum cleaner looking mouth. Like this:

Some of those look like whelks or nassarius. Here's how to differentiate the two.

Whelk versus Nassarius | Melev's Reef

www.melevsreef.com

Another ID resource.

Snails, Whelks, Conchs - Gulf Specimen Marine Lab

Class Gastropoda Watch Gastropod videos on youtube.com Barnacle beast . Moon Snail close up . Whelk squirts water . Whelk Egg case . Periwinkle snail M-810 KEYHOLE LIMPET , Diodora aspera or other species A primitive uni-valve gastropod. The conical shell resembles a coolie hat. Moves freely...

gulfspecimen.org

The second set certainly looks more like ceriths, but the first group seems a bit small to even tell- Their flesh is pure white and they move rather quickly... Also, I've only seen them on macroalgae even though I dropped a jumbo shrimp in the tank to lure out some of the predators. I also got a picture of one laying eggs, and it doesn't look like any whelk egg I've ever seen.

 

[duberii]

here are the eggs

 

[duberii]

Also keep finding these orange snails.... topsnails from my research which eat either hydroids or algae

 

[duberii]

a little bump for the snails

 

[eschaton]

This thread gets me excited because I'm supposed to get a TBS package myself in a few weeks. I ordered it back on the 3rd but they're backed up due to storms.

Personally, I'd only remove the snails that have the large siphons. They're almost certainly whelks and predatory to some degree, though it's possible they're scavengers related to Nassarius. The other snails are probably algae-eaters. It's pretty unlikely you have any dedicated coral-eating snails with so little coral on the rocks.

 

[Variant]

From two past TBS live rock experiences in two different systems, some common bad hitchhikers I found were these giant clam eating flatworms, gorilla crabs, fish eating isopods, and whelk snails. I would look for these during lights out with a red flashlight.

You think there are none but just wait till the dead of night. Had to dismantle my recent tank because there were just too many isopods attacking my fish at night and I was getting tired of staying up late at night trying to trap and net them out and seeing expensive quarantined fish get bit and have lasting bite marks...

Other than that, great stuff

 

[duberii]

From two past TBS live rock experiences in two different systems, some common bad hitchhikers I found were these giant clam eating flatworms, gorilla crabs, fish eating isopods, and whelk snails. I would look for these during lights out with a red flashlight.

You think there are none but just wait till the dead of night. Had to dismantle my recent tank because there were just too many isopods attacking my fish at night and I was getting tired of staying up late at night trying to trap and net them out and seeing expensive quarantined fish get bit and have lasting bite marks...

Other than that, great stuff

I've definitely seen a few gorilla crabs, whelks, aeolid nudis, and predatory oenone fulgidas , but I must say I haven't caught any of the flatworms or isopods... Do you have a picture of what the isopods would look like? All I know of is those isopods with the giant black eyes, but I'm pretty confident I can identify those.

 

[duberii]

This thread gets me excited because I'm supposed to get a TBS package myself in a few weeks. I ordered it back on the 3rd but they're backed up due to storms.

Personally, I'd only remove the snails that have the large siphons. They're almost certainly whelks and predatory to some degree, though it's possible they're scavengers related to Nassarius. The other snails are probably algae-eaters. It's pretty unlikely you have any dedicated coral-eating snails with so little coral on the rocks.

The thing is I just saw the snails lay eggs, and they don't look like whelk eggs. The picture is above.

 

[LOVEROCK]

anyone in NYC , looking to split shipping ? was deciding to get some

 

[Variant]

I've definitely seen a few gorilla crabs, whelks, aeolid nudis, and predatory oenone fulgidas , but I must say I haven't caught any of the flatworms or isopods... Do you have a picture of what the isopods would look like? All I know of is those isopods with the giant black eyes, but I'm pretty confident I can identify those.

They're called Cirolanid Isopods and they look like this:

Size can vary a lot from 1/4" to the largest I've seen being between 3/4" to 1". They can be latched onto the fish at night or scurrying around on the sand, glass, under the rocks or on it. Had a traumatic experience where I finally decided to put in fish, the first being a small pair of clownfish the smaller of which was tumbling in the water that first night and when I looked closer, there were a ton of these isopods sucking its blood and once netted, had to use tweezers to smash the isopods before pulling off because these suckers were really latched onto the fish... clownfish did not make it...

Just decided that after a month of hunting for isopods, I was too tired and wouldn't sleep sound so i took out all the rock, cleaned the tank but used some of the biologically sound water to seed dry rock, which helped.

 

[CuzzA]

The isopods seem to be hit or miss. More often miss, thankfully. If you're concerned you could toss a couple black mollies in and see if anything turns up, no acclimation seems to yield higher success. Just float thirty minutes for temp. They would also act as canarys for the slim chance ich is present. The only fish in the TBS holding tanks are hitchikers typically like small gobies so they're likely to be very hungry and I would expect a quick response to the presence of fish.

 

[duberii]

They're called Cirolanid Isopods and they look like this:

Size can vary a lot from 1/4" to the largest I've seen being between 3/4" to 1". They can be latched onto the fish at night or scurrying around on the sand, glass, under the rocks or on it. Had a traumatic experience where I finally decided to put in fish, the first being a small pair of clownfish the smaller of which was tumbling in the water that first night and when I looked closer, there were a ton of these isopods sucking its blood and once netted, had to use tweezers to smash the isopods before pulling off because these suckers were really latched onto the fish... clownfish did not make it...

Just decided that after a month of hunting for isopods, I was too tired and wouldn't sleep sound so i took out all the rock, cleaned the tank but used some of the biologically sound water to seed dry rock, which helped.

Looks like their life cycle is about 2-4 weeks, and I'll be quarantining the rock before adding to my tank for that long anyway. I've been monitoring the rock and, clearly, trying to ID any critters I don't recognize. In the meantime, I'm feeding the tank reef roids daily, in hopes of keeping some of the sponges/tunicates/filter feeders alive.

 

[duberii]

The isopods seem to be hit or miss. More often miss, thankfully. If you're concerned you could toss a couple black mollies in and see if anything turns up, no acclimation seems to yield higher success. Just float thirty minutes for temp. They would also act as canarys for the slim chance ich is present. The only fish in the TBS holding tanks are hitchikers typically like small gobies so they're likely to be very hungry and I would expect a quick response to the presence of fish.

I'm not too worried anyway- I'm holding off on adding the rock until I feel comfortable with the hitchhikers I can identify. Of course, more will pop up once it's in the tank, but I can hopefully curb the population of the predatory worms (and isopods) before adding it to my tank.