Snowflakes growing in my tanks.

[DNoakes]

Hi everyone,
I have these snowflake like things growing on my tank glass. They started shortly after introducing a couple hundred pounds of live rock. They are currently about 2-3mm across and have perfectly uniform tenticles reaching out from the center. I have a picture of it and am attaching it to this post. In the picture due to the size and the focus ability of my camera the tenticles are not visible but the bulk of the body and shape are visible.
Does anyone know what it is and if it is a good or bad thing to have in my tank? I am running mainly fish only but have also some soft coral and anemonaes.
Any help or advice would be appreciated.
thank you,
DNoakes.

[paddyob]

Are they flat on the glass? If so don't worry about them too much. I had something similar at one point and they ended up either being eaten by the fish or just disappearing. I am not sure where they went but they are gone.

[DNoakes]

yeah they are perfectly flat. I was wondering if they might be a hydroid? Not sure what hydroids are and not sure if they are good or bad. I have a shipment of starfish and urchins coming in and am worried about introducing them into that tank.

[ALang]

Not hydroids, but star fishes that came in with your live rock. I had them too, but disappearred after a while...eaten by fish or died. Usually pretty harmless.

[DNoakes]

Okay these things are creeping me out. They just started swimming around the tank like jelly fish. There are thousands of them.

[ScubaSteve]

My guess is that they are jellyfish. Jellyfish start out as polyps similar to what you saw on your glass and then release several offspring from a single polyp. If they are free swimming I woouldn't worry too much about your urchins and starfish. I'd be more concerned about your corals/fish. But since these are babies they won't really pack a huge sting, in fact, some of your fish might eat them depending on what you have. Take a picture! I wanna see, I wanna see!

[Zoaelite]

My guess is that they are jellyfish. Jellyfish start out as polyps similar to what you saw on your glass and then release several offspring from a single polyp. If they are free swimming I woouldn't worry too much about your urchins and starfish. I'd be more concerned about your corals/fish. But since these are babies they won't really pack a huge sting, in fact, some of your fish might eat them depending on what you have. Take a picture! I wanna see, I wanna see!

+1, the life cycle of a jelly fish is really fascinating but they tend to die very easily in captivity so I would love to see some photos!

[DNoakes]

Does anyone know if there is any fish or invert that will eat Jellyfish?

[DNoakes]

I posted an attachment to my original post. It shows one pic of one of the jellyfish I will upload another pic with this message.

[DNoakes]

Here is another pic as an attachment of the Jellyfish in my tank.

[DiverDude]

Have you tried scooping them up with a net ?

[DNoakes]

I'm trying just about everything on that tank including a dedicated uv sterilizer on it as well as a TWIN 80 WATT UV sterilizer after the sump.

[MitchM]

If you want to remove them, mechanically is probably the best way. They can't really control the direction that they swim in so they will most likely end up going through your skimmer or sump pumps, which they won't survive.
A net is probably the simplest route. A filter sock on your sump inflow will get them too.

Where did you get the live rock they came in on?

Mitch

[DNoakes]

The live rock was shipped to me directly from Bali. Not sure if I saved any money though the rock was free but shipping works out to be $14.00/kg.

[MitchM]

Free live rock straight from Bali................:surprise:

You are very fortunate.....keep an eye out for lots more interesting critters!:smile:

Mitch

[DNoakes]

My question is where is Water Valley, AB? I'm currently living in Sparwood B.C.

[MitchM]

We're about 45 minutes north of Cochrane, in the foothills.

Mitch

[DNoakes]

Well as far as interesting creatures goes I've had a couple of soft corals, some cool looking purple crabs and a 4" long Zebra mantis shrimp with hundreds of little babies, a few scalops and clams and also what looks like a cluster of flame scalops but only blue in colour.

[DNoakes]

Cool I don't get past Calgary very often. I always seem to migrate south towards leathbridge. So do you do your shopping at Big Als or Golds or other?

[MitchM]

Red Coral, Wais and Big Als for fresh.

Mitch

[ALang]

Wow! Someone should go over to your place with a HD camcorder to film this! Should be hugely interesting! Keep us posted, please.

[monocus]

they look like upsidedown jelly fish-they will grow to about 5/8 of an inch and are completly harmless-they feed on light and plankton but nothing i know of will eat them.if you have bright enough lights(metal halide or led)you can breed them and sell them to your local store.they will come back every year.i use to have them before my tank crashed and they are fairly interesting.they start out on a stalk under the rock and will eventually turn a translucent blue

[Sumfingwong]

Any update to this tank? the mantis with babies and jellyfish?

[gobytron]

wow....
more pics please...

this could be a sweet thread to follow with such fresh live rock....

[KeMo]

look on here for them
http://www.chucksaddiction.com/hitchworms.html

[DNoakes]

Well all but one jellyfish has disapeared. The one that has stayed has planted himself on a piece of live rock and become like a cone shape for the time being. It's growing rapidly and is now almost 3cm across. Unfortunately I can't take pics of it right now. I need a new cam. The mantis shrimp I have put into a coral tank with about 1" live sand and 3" lava rock on top for hiding places. The mother mantis is in the tank with the babies and all is good. they show themselves once in a while but mainly stay hidden in the daytime. They don't hunt my corals just my fish so I'm keeping all my fish out of the coral tank.

[Sumfingwong]

What kind of mantis shrimp?

[DNoakes]

The best guess at this point is that they are a Odontodactylus scyllarus - peacock mantis shrimp.

[High tide]

What kind of anemones do you have? I have seen Aiptasia reproduce this way before. The larval stage of anemones are free swimming until they settle.

[DNoakes]

These are most definately jellyfish. Most of them fell victim to the protine skimmer. The one that I can find has planted itself on a piece of rock and is inverting it's cone. They are a very nice translucent blue in colour.

[Sumfingwong]

update? :)