Finally got approval from the wife to have a "fish tank"

**DWhatley** · Feb 02, '11, 10:46pm

Other people may have long term success, just not me

. I think a good bit of my lack of success is the lowered lighting I keep in the tanks. I only keep softies and only some of the hardiest ones that don't require a lot of light. The one tank I have with high light (our nano) needs to be cleaned twice a week. I only clean it weekly but you can't see into it for the green algae on the glass by Wednesday. With 9 aquariums, I could not possibly keep up with cleaning if they were all heavily lit.

The ACETABULARIA from the site you found looks interesting and might be something worth trying in the nano. If you happen to see it in stock try to remember to PM me or post.

**Jimmy55002000** · Feb 02, '11, 11:01pm

Will do. The Acetabularia looks really cool, I was actually thinking about emailing them to see if it could survive in my tank, but I think I already know the answer...

**Jimmy55002000** · Feb 15, '11, 5:13pm

So I noticed a couple of tiny hitch hikers that came with my snails. I noticed one snail shell has maybe a hundred very tiny white stalks with about 5 tentacles each. Including the stalk and tentacles they stand maybe 1 mm tall. Yesterday when I was servicing my main pump a scraped a jellyfish-like animal about the size of a dime off the suction cup. It was clear with some milky spots. Sorry I don't have a camera good enough to capture the animals. My first thought was hydroids... Any ideas?

The other is a worm living in a crevase in a hermit shell with 2 half inch tentacles which he can retract very quickly. He's amusing to try to find but the hydroids (if thats what they are) are making me nervous. So far I haven't found any pictures online that look lke what I have, but I'm guessing they are very young.

**DWhatley** · Feb 16, '11, 2:02am

You may want to put the worm in a shell in a separate container and try to get a look at it. There are a couple of worms that are highly undesirable.

The stalked things with tentacles may be aptasia and removing the snail and its hitchhikers is recommended as these are the bain of reef keepers. They don't seem to bother octos much but will multiply mercilessly (the dandelion of anemones). After removing the snail, I would recommend getting a couple of peppermint shrimp if they match the pictures in the link. Peps will keep the new ones to a minimum (they don't seem to eat the larger ones) and will sometimes avoid becoming ceph food.

Your jellyfish like thing is possibly a type of flat worm. Unfoturnately I can't find the article on the one I am thinking about but MarineDepot has a decent article that shows one as well as aptasia.

See if any of the references match up with what you are seeing. If not describe how they are different.

**Jimmy55002000** · Feb 20, '11, 6:41pm

Well, I searched and searched but came up with no concrete results on any of the hitchers. I looked at flatworms, aptasia and annelids but found nothing in my book or online resembling the critters. After looking at flatworms, I am pretty convinced the "jelly" was not a worm. It was completely clear and perfectly round with no visible head, organs or appendages.

I don’t think the anemone things are aptasia, either. All of the aptasia pictures I looks through (hundreds) showed a brown or a brown tinge in the animals with an enlarged oral disc, and it seems like they grow much faster. The stalks of the animals I have in my tank are not rigid, do not appear to have enlarged oral discs, and have fewer tentacles than aptasia. It appears to be about 5 tentacles per body, and the tentacle thickness is consistent- they don't appear to be any thicker towards the body. They are also still very small.

It looks like snail fur.

The worm was some sort of annelid. I lost curiosity after I broke open the shell and saw his segments. Either way he’s outta here.

I’ve also had cyano for the last month. I feed flake food and my chaeto hasn’t grown at all. I’m going to turn off the lights, scrub the rocks and skim/change water and start feeding the raw seafood I have instead of flake, and I will remove any uneaten food. Is there anything else I could do? I use RODI and I think my salt mix from Instant Ocean was a bad bag; low in magnesium and high in calcium.

I'll try to get a picture up

**DWhatley** · Feb 20, '11, 11:16pm

Glad your anemone things are not aptasia or worse mojo (sp?) anemonies (I can't get rid of the ones in my nano and when I try they multiply). Do they look anything like a feather duster worm? The little feather dusters I am thinking about have crowns like the common larger ones just tiny in comparison (they remind me of snow flakes and are often white but not always) but I would not describe them as snail fur.

There is a small jelly that I have had hatch from new rock that swims and looks like a jelly (unfortunately I don't remember the name) but I don't remember them going to the glass. Sadly they don't live long in an aquarium.