Vermetid Snails killing my corals Help please!!
 

I have scraped and poked out hundreds on 6 coral and 5 rocks today dont want the balance in my tank. Does anyone know how to perminantly get rid of these pests they are ruining my corals and i thought it was something else until someone in the snail/critter forum helped me idea and i did a search and now i know why my candycanes dont last I am sick of these vermin. I heard emerald crabs but then I have them to deal with they can eat my smaller fish I would imagine. Help !!!

vermetid snails are killers
 

http://i864.photobucket.com/albums/a...s/IMG_0770.jpg

these buggers are the problem.

I don't think they hurt anything. As far as candycanes go, I have a colony with close to 200 heads and my tank is full of vermetids.

My biggest problem is with my acros. The vermetids grow and the acros grow on the vermetids. It's a constant race, sometimes the acro completely covers the snail to finally kill it.

Do copperbands eat these?

vermetid snails are plankton eaters, not coralavores. These mesosnails secrete mucus that catch detritus and planktonic material that they then pull in to eat. If there are huge numbers of them, say several hundred within 2.5 inches or so, then a coral might get bugged, but by no means will the snails eat a coral. You have another culprit it sounds like. those arent numerous enough to even slightly irritate a coral. i would watch your tank at night by spot checking it with a red lense flashlight. i would bet there is something in there you havent seen yet.

what other inhabitants do you have in there as far as crab and fish?

+1 Wzrdbear,
these snails might irritate a coral by drifting it 's mucusy strings all over it but I have never had any problems.

I have a few tiny hermits like 1/4 " and snails lots of snails. The only proof I have of the candycanes getting hit by these guys is this I had about 150-350 growing on the stem of 21 heads and since I knew no better they over ran those heads one by one if there not vermetid in those tubes then its something nasty none the less. They grow right through my monti caps. My staghorn colony was also over ran by them i stopped counting at about one hundred fourty something. i will admit I know nothing about vermin in tanks but if I only have this growing on the black parts of my corals what else is there to blame. I will do the red light thing to check them out at night. I was infected with these guys from LR from a guy who sold me lots of corals and the rocks remembering back were covered on the back sides literally thousands looked like a porcupine.

I have a ton of these and no problems. Definatly check night critters.

It sounds like they are congragating where there is a food source, and they are simply getting closer ( remember the 2.5 to 3 inches? ) to the food source.They still arent eating the coral, just getting closer to the source of food, in this case, debris and possibly what is attacking your corals which might even be protozoal or bacterial. They are actually pretty good for your tank. Its one of the reasons i stopped using mexican turbo snails. They would bulldoze or graze one of my corals and literally scrape flesh off. This small opening in the coral is enough to kill the whole thing and is also like ringing the dinner bell. Copepods, hermits, some fish that are "reef safe" even are opportunistic feeders. normally they wouldnt touch it, but dangle food in thier face, and they will take it. If you have a refugium or a quarantine tank set up, i would suggest a move till they get better. Lots of carbon and good indirect water movement, elevated iodine or a uv sterilizer and good skimming would be a good start to help them.

Best of luck

Any luck with the night spotting?

Is there a way to kill all vermetid snails in the tank? I hate looking into it and seeing all the strings of crap.

I know they can be good for the tank, but they're an annoyance, and ugly. Hair algae can be good for the tank too, but it doesn't mean I want it either.

I had looked into ways to get rid of these a while back and was told there is nothing that eats them; however, a hypo-salinity dip was suggested by the folks at liveaquaria.com when I called them, as the snails will vacate their tubes and run for the hills when you do this, then you can dispose of them. Depending on what else is on the rock, this may be an option, but you have to dip each rock.

Old post I know but yes they do irritate corals with the webs. I had a candy cane covered with them. Currently recovering from me scraping their bodies out (they go right into the stalk. Hope he makes it but he hadn't grown in over a year. Noticed a huge one the other day whose web was bugging my folded brain so I pulled the rock dug the sucker out (he was big....surprised me) and superglued the rest the tubes I could find. Now as I see them I just superglue the end of the tube so they can't get out. It's a process. Let it go unchecked for awhile so I've got lots to deal with

I got rid of them by reducing food.

Thats what I was going to say. Reduce feeding and reduce their food source

Increasing my flow substantially and adding a yellow coris and melanurus did the trick for me. I squeezed some of them with pliers an hour or so before feeding and they figured them out. The increased flow made the snails feeding difficult. Used to have hundreds. Good Luck!

Whenever I agitate the sand bed and get stuff mixed up in the water column is the only time they secrete that mucus.

Plug there holes with epoxy

I read that Bumble Bee Snails may eat them, but I have not witnessed this. I also heard that some wrasse eat them, but I have not witnessed this either.

Reduce broadcast feeding and feed more pellets and/or flakes for a while. Less food in the water column=less snails.

As planktivores these snails compete directly for food with your corals. I was skeptical regarding any harm these cause but I recall reviewing a recent study that correlated vermetid snail population inversely with coral population so there could be something to it.

I just had a web completely cover an Afro and another on a monti. These things are awful and I'm tearing my tank down to kill them all. Then im cooking all that rock. Forget this. It's awful

Stop over feeding. I've had hundreds in my tank. And not one coral died. The only way that I got rid of them. Is by not over feeding. Basically I starved them to death.

These bloody snails are killing my corals.

No way to get rid of them, I have thousands and thousands on all the rocks.
I tried with Chelmon rostratus, with yellow and green wrasses, with Forcipiger longirostris... no way.

Under full light the corals grow on them, in the shadow they overwhelm corals... so I have good looking acroS from above... but horribly bleached on the bottom.


PLEASE HELP ME!!! :hammer::hammer::hammer:

I had a large one of these. it was growing a couple of inches from a brain coral I got. I didn't think much of it for a few months. When I noticed that it kept stealing the food i target fed my brain I broke it off but it was too late. now I have dozens of small ones everywhere including the back wall of my DT so I can't use glue on them so I'm going to wait until they're a bit bigger and pry them off. If you let them grow too big they release spores or something and you'll end up with an infestation. Although they may not directly harm coral they may cause some stress with their strings and hundreds of strings can make the tank look ugly.

I I used to have a few of them but now
Are thousands...of and they getting bigger and bigger....the tube is Flipping hard ...just wondering how much calcium can they
Absorb???? Thousands of them for sure
Can deplete calcium in the tank, ,,,
I need to find a biological fix..... ..fish or .. crab..
Or some things that will Feed on these things