Worms??

[Curehead]

I have had my 32 gallon tank fresh to marine conversion cycling for about 2 weeks now with 10kilo of live rock and sand.

I put a deli shrimp in last week and it's doing the swelling up and ballooning thing now. All my tests look good and I have had my first spike.

I bought a small frag full of pollops (I dont know what they are) but any help IDing any of these plants and pollops would be appreciated.

I haven't seen any critters except a small transparent coepod snail after about two days.

The last 2 days i have noticed some white dots on the front of the glass.

And today i noticed that there are now about 20 of them all different sizes and it appears that small 3 mm long white threads are attached to the glass by one end and they appear to be swaying in the water.

http://i525.photobucket.com/albums/cc335/curehead_2008/spots.jpg

Is it possible that these are clumps of eggs of some worm? If so are they good or bad?

I'm new to this and a bit panicy so any advice..really really appreciated..

 

[Corailline]

Hi,

If you have the piece of shrimp decaying in the tank to help to initiate the cycle you can not add any live stock, no corals, fish or inverts. Regardless of if the ammonia and nitrite and nitrates levels are zero at this point. I may have miss understood but I re-read it. Two weeks is far too early to add anything to the system, unless you started with completely cured live rock and are familar with marine system cycles to the point you can soft cycle with confidence. As for the ID of the white things I do not know.
My advice is to remove the shrimp you do not need it and it will not shorten the cycle. The tank will cycle just fine without adding any organic matter to decay. Enjoy the hobby go slow and research, it will be more rewarding in the long run and the loss of money and livestock will decrease dramatically.

 

[Adalius]

White 'snail' like things might be typical spiral worms. They tend to happen pretty quick after cycling and will end up on everything in the tank that's hard, like glass, rock, etc. They're harmless and actually beneficial filter feeders, although due to their size they don't have much impact.

The small frag of polyps look to be zoas or palys, but since they're closed it's hard to say. They're likely closed because they're stressed because it sounds like your tank isn't fully cycled yet.

If you had your first spike, and just took the shrimp out now, that tells me you're rushing things. You should probably have held off on the purchase of the polyps. Ideally your ammonia should have spiked, and gone down, when it started going down the nitrite should have spiked, then gone down, and when it started going down you should have started seeing nitrate show up. Once ammonia & nitrite are 0ppm and nitrate is present, then your cycle is done, wait another day or two just to be sure, then start stocking some clean up crew members, slowly at first as there isn't a lot of detritus for them to feed off of yet. So you'd be looking at hermit crabs and snails likely to start with.

You could also do your first water change if the nitrates have climbed high enough to warrant one. Most will recommend one after your cycle is done, I myself tend to wait until the nitrates get high enough for me to require one and haven't had any ill effects from it as there's really nothing large, fickle, or expensive in the tank yet.

Once you're positive that the cycle is done, and you've researched... and this is important, you shouldn't purchase anything that you can't identify and don't know how to take care of, so once you've researched, then you can go get some soft corals to put in your tank. I say soft corals because, and this is just my opinion, they're a good starter coral for someone coming from fresh to marine with no marine experience (I'm assuming you have none, correct me if I'm wrong). You could also look at some hardy LPSs if you have sufficient lighting and flow in your tank, things like candy cane coral.

The key to this whole hobby is patience though. Don't rush anything, read up on anything you're about to do if you haven't done it before, and ask questions.

 

[BigJay]

well worded Adalius, as usual.

 

[Adalius]

Glad to see my hard work in high school English classes paid off ;D

 

[Curehead]

Thanks so much guys.

Just to clear up some things.

1) I bought the rock from LFS and they took it straight out of their display aquarium so I guess it's cured.

2) I am an Expat living in Istanbul so its sometimes difficult to find out what I'm buying with the language barrier. i did only pay 20 Lira for the pollup frag (which is about 10 dollars).

On an exciting point I just noticed three of four tiny critters...

There are maybe 4 mm long and look like long thin elongated miniature centipedes or earwigs . They were running really fast across the rock when my shadow went across the tank and they disappeared back into the foramen of the rock.

They were tiny but really fast and running across the rock not swimming. they were maybe light brown and had legs.

 

[Adalius]

Sounds like small bristle worms or amphi/iso/copepods (depending on size).

Here's bristleworm for comparison:

And a pod:

For scale, bristle worms can be the size of a pencil lead in a mechanical pencil, or up to 3/4" around and several feet long. A pod is usually 1-2mm wide at most in a typical aquarium, in the wild there are species that get this big:

 

[Curehead]

It wasn't really the bristle worm shape. The amphipod seems more like it...but don't they tend to swim rather than run?
These things were almost like land bugs the way they were running over the rock...whatever they are its exciting and freaky too..scared the crap out of myself by google searching earlier and found baby mantis shrimp that looked similar..

 

[Adalius]

They can swim to a limited extent, really more of a floating along the current type thing, but they are often found running on rocks, in substrate, along the glass, etc.

 

[Curehead]

cheers mate.... they are all over seen at least 20 now..

 

[BigJay]

good critters. They clean up organics. They do run and quite fast. It is a little creepy how much they appear as they are on land and not in water.

 

[Curehead]

Yup that's the ones Jay...I thought they reminded me more of ants than anything in the sea or underwater. They must be perfectly streamlined for movement. not being a ceepy crawly man (who nearly failed etymology and parisitology because he couldn't bear to look down a microscope at BIGGER bugs) I did find it slightly creepy.

Just done another test and everything seems to be in order to my untrained eyes.

All the thread worms attached to the front glass all now have 3 or four extended legs or antenae similar looking to the fan tail work that is nestled amongst my pollops. (At least they did...I have dragged the magnet cleaner across the front of the tank and now have a crystal clear front glass once more. I hope i dislodged them rather than killed them. They came off very easily. Though I must admit I am far more inclined to wash my hands after playing with the tank now I that have seen worms and bugs in there LOL..

One more thing.. for the first time since I bought that little frag of pollops everyone of them was open and not just open it looked like they were almost straining upright and trying to capture every little bit of light or food going by and there is a huge feather duster worm right in the middle of them with beautiful green ringed pattern around his legs..

Loving this hobby and thanks for the knowledge guys. I promise to pass it on in as friendly way as it was given to me when required.