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melev

Strange egg casings

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by
melev
, 08-11-2011 at 01:31 AM (3510 Views)
Today, I discovered a lot of white dots on the black overflow panel in my reef. It's impossible to get a decent picture because I have to shoot at an angle through 3/4" glass. The interesting things is each dot is hanging off the wall like skin tags, at a downhill angle. Looking closely, each one seems to have 10 or 12 eggs inside.





So unless they grow into something bigger or I can find them elsewhere that allows me to get some direct pictures perpendicular to the subject, I won't be able to do any better.

I don't even know what kind of animal in my reef would lay eggs like this. It's strange.

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  1. waitasecun's Avatar
    I wish I could offer an explantion of the eggs.....If I had to guess, I would say its some sort of snail egg(not cerith)....since they are usually the only things that are crawling around on the glass other than urchins and some other types of starfish.
  2. mhowe9's Avatar
    Marc, my guess is some sort of snail. What kind of snails do you have in your system? I have had ceriths spawn in my system but the egg pattern was much different.
  3. Heathd's Avatar
    Marc, that looks like the egg sacs of the strombus grazers you got a while back, although, I have never seen mine lay that many at once.

    Did you put them into your display tank?
  4. FlammySnake's Avatar
    Dove snails! Awesome! If you end up with a ton of those I would kill to get my hands on them!
  5. waldend's Avatar
    I had something that looked the same and it ended up being Stomatella.
  6. waldend's Avatar
    I cant edit my post above but I started thinking and then reading and it seems Stomatella are broadcast spawners. Those did show up at the same time I got a sudden bloom of them though. Without a close up they look like Nassarius snail eggs. I think thats actually what mine were but I never had any adults show up.
  7. FlammySnake's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by waldend
    I had something that looked the same and it ended up being Stomatella.
    Ahhhh of course! They are breeding like crazy here! But so are the dove snails, i always assumed stomatellas were broadcast spawners! Wrong again i guess.

    Edit: I guess I was right.
    Updated 08-11-2011 at 04:34 PM by FlammySnake
  8. Heathd's Avatar
    Dove snails are a type of Stomatella, so are the strombus grazers I mentioned.
  9. FlammySnake's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Heathd
    Dove snails are a type of Stomatella, so are the strombus grazers I mentioned.
    I have to disagree, respectfully. Strombus grazer is a name a company gave to the dove snail as a dove snail isn't a Strombus(genus of conch's). Stomatellas are however stomatellas(even then i think Shimek disagrees with that). Dove snails are without a doubt, not stomatellas, respectfully.
  10. melev's Avatar
    I have no idea, but totally appreciate all the guessing you guys are doing. I suppose I could carefully scrape away a few of these and try to get a picture at a good angle.

    Snails in my reef consist of: Astrea, Nassarius, Ceriths, Stomatella & Strombus (both in the refugium and frag tank, not the main reef where these were found). I have three conchs as well, but I never see them anywhere but the sandbed.
  11. DJ in WV's Avatar
    They are aiptasia, Get the blowtorch out
  12. Scott Fellman's Avatar
    Snail eggs? Planular larvae?
  13. melev's Avatar
    I think I figured it out last night. When I checked on the area again, there were hundreds of Collonista snails in that same area. I'm guessing these are their babies. I would have thought they would place these right at the substrate or in the substrate instead of this exposed vertical surface.