Help Identifying Some of the Life in the Refugium of my 75 Gallon
by
, 04-15-2013 at 12:12 AM (8294 Views)
Hello All! ,
I have a few things I would like help identifying in my aquarium. They are mainly found in my refugium.
So I captured these videos the other day. The first one is from my refugium which contains live rock, chaeto, and 1” miracle mud as substrate. It is filled with life, and some type of snail and possibly mysis shrimp(?) breeding has been happening. The first video is a close-up of one of the rocks in the refugium. If you look closely you can see little white baby somethings swarming all over the side of the rock. In fact there are swarms of them everywhere. They are all over my refugium AND main display (just a little harder to find in my main display), and there are thousands and thousands of them. A friend of mine (NYSteelo from facebook) told me he believed they were baby mysis shrimp. Is this correct? Also, it has been about a year since I put the miracle mud in, and I need to change it out. I need to replace 50% of the substrate in my refugium. I plan on doing this with a net, and just swapping it out. Will doing this hurt the life (and baby mysis shrimp or whatever they are) in my refugium?
The second video is from my main display and is from a red light after light out. It is hard to make out what is in the video, but clearly you can see life. These, I believe, are the same mysis shrimp only much bigger. If you can’t see it on the video, they have a circular body with what looks like tails on them. If these are mysis shrimp, or whatever, what does this mean for my system? Is there anything in particular I can do to help them (although they seem to be getting along quite nicely without my help).
The third video is of a snail, bred in my refugium. I have nearly 50 of them now. They do not appear to have shells. In the video, the snail is rolling around the miracle mud, seeming to love it. In the background you can again see the baby mysis. Does anyone know what type of snails these are? Once they grow bigger, should I throw in some shells for them to take to or will they grow shells themselves?
Thank you guys for any help you can give. It is much appreciated. I love this hobby! ~ Dustin