Gozer_1

In my few years with my tank I have had a few pests and problems. I've had my share of cyano warfare and diatoms. Of them all there are two that have caused me the most grief. Two little critters that make me crazy. Two little things I've have battled for too long. So long that I nearly gave up entirely. The first is the worst! We've battled long and brutally and I've done nothing but lose ground. They are my #1 enemy, Vermitid Snails. The other is much more manageable and mostly just annoying. The battles are easily won but they regroup in great strength. They're mostly the result of lacking knowledge and even more lacking action. They are Asterina Stars. Very annoying. While not necessarily causal, their appearance does correlate very closely with the sudden and rapid decline of most of my Zoos.

Let's start with those snails. What the heck are they? Well they're tiny little snails who stick themselves to anything and build little shell houses that stay in place. They don't crawl around they just poke their heads out a spit a mucous net in to the water to catch food.
In the picture they are indicated by red arrows and you can see the "net" inside the blue circle.

This mucous can irritate coral as well as just making things look gross and, well, mucousy. To try and control them I've tried removing and killing as many as I could. The problem is they get in places you'll never get to and seem to have no trouble reproducing. It's my belief that poor detritus control and poor feeding behavior are the primary causes of the problem. However, now that they are so prolific, it'll take considerably more than general maintenance habits and good feeding practices to get them under control. My only thought now is to replace all the rock and remove them from any equipment.

My second foe is not so bad. I have a pretty hefty population of Asterina Stars. For the most part they aren't really that big of a deal. It's mostly a visual issue for me. The crawl all over every thing and generally drive me nuts. Now, I know that I can get these guys under control with a little work and a lot of cleaning regularly. I use a canister filter to vacuum them out. With good maintenance and detritus removal They'll have a harder time making their come back. Atleast they don't have a hard shell to hide in and are easily removed with the filter hose and a turkey baster. I blow em off the rocks and suck em up. It's part of my detritus removal. Detritus is really probably a serious source of my troubles.

My efforts to battle the detritus continue but things are looking up. I can see the health of my tank improving as I've been doing near daily vacuuming with the canister filter. Removing built up gunk from every where. I still get a pretty good cloud but things are getting better. I already feel like the stars are getting back in to check. On the other hand I stabbed my self on one of the snail "chimneys" yesterday. Those Vermitids are gonna make me crazy.

Anyway, thanks for reading.