White things growing on glass

[maxwellwhothunk]

Ok so the other day I thought I noticed micro bubbles on my tank's glass. But under closer inspection it is a small (<1mm in diameter) white spiral. There are maybe 15-20 of these spread over my 75 gal tank.

So I begin to wonder, is it something related to algae or to the snails in the tank?

Does anyone know what this is?!?!? And what I should do about it. (Scrape it off, let it be, etc)

Thanks,
Max

[MikeS]

These are probably tiny tube worms....I get them on my glass all the time also. I leave the ones on the back alone, but I scrape off the ones on the front and sides...

Mike

[maxwellwhothunk]

so are they a good thing or bad thing?

[albert]

Do they look like those? If yes then you have Spirorbis sp. tube worms, good guys sure. 8)

http://hepatus.mine.nu/aquarium/pics/dsc01398.jpg

[Sugar Magnolia]

Awesome pic of spiorbidaes albert! Woo!

Harmless filter feeders, but they are quite prolific and will quickly reproduce and cover areas of the glass. I find that I have to scrape them along with coraline from time to time.

[albert]

Awesome pic of spiorbidaes albert! Woo!

Thanks to good camera. :wink: I found them couple of days ago in the overflow and did a quick research to ID them. Although they look quite big in picture, in nature they are max 2-3 mm in diameter. Here's one more picture of it. There is a pod crawling around his feeding tentacles.

http://hepatus.mine.nu/aquarium/pics/dsc01396.jpg

[maxwellwhothunk]

ok, yeah thats exactly what they look like, well that makes me feel much better. They were introduced to my system most likely with the live rock I just added. When I do scrape them off the glass will they die? or will the fall the the gravel and still live? Is there any easy way to move them somewhere (like the sump) where there are less of distraction?

[Sugar Magnolia]

Here's a pic of a bunch growing in my tank. This'll give you a better perspective as to size and also how they multiply. These are down in the back corner of my cube where I can't reach to scrape.
http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/572/64414spiorbidae_005.jpg%20

[maxwellwhothunk]

for some reason I cant see the picture.

[Sugar Magnolia]

dang...the dreaded red x.

Oh well, I tried to outsmart the gremlin in the program that seems to be plaguing me and we can now see that it didn't work. Tried linking from another site, but linky no worky. Seems I was just not meant to show anyone my spiorbidaes.

[maxwellwhothunk]

Lol, sorry to hear that, i would have liked to see those pictures, well thanks anyway for trying, I appreciate the effort.

[Sugar Magnolia]

Here you go maxwell. If the link won't come to us, we must go to the link. :)
http://reefcentral.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=55325

[rossignol]

Hi

SM: the problem is an appended space at the end of the filename, so the filename ends up looking something like this:

64414spiorbidae_005.jpg%20

The %20 is simply *code* for a space.

This likely happened either when the filename was put in the field or something in the code for the upload did it. :)

I wonder if this is a pretty common cause of the red X thing in these forums. If so, the ops could easily put in some code to trim any spaces from the end -- filename = LTrim(filename) :)

- Brian

[Sugar Magnolia]

http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/572/64414spiorbidae_005.jpg

[Sugar Magnolia]

happy dance!!!! Woo! thanks.

[maxwellwhothunk]

cool thanks, I dont have nearly that many... lol. But thank you, I enjoyed that.

Thanks for your help,
Max

[BigBill]

All I see is an ad for reef central.com