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Unfortunately, snail eggs and hatchling-sized snails can easily be in filter media and also on the inner surfaces of filters if an adult snail somehow is able to get in - sponges especially are a place where little snails go because they feed on the detritus. While a strong impeller might be...

Just realized I linked a Wisconsin thing I was looking at on those snails, not the Michigan one I looked at first... https://www.michigan.gov/invasives/id-report/mollusks/new-zealand-mud-snail Seems pretty likely to me that's what they are unfortunately given the region. Could even have gotten...

Hmm...well, not a trumpet snail (Thiaridae). Looks more like some things I've seen called "mud snails" (Potamopyrgus; had to look it up). Were the plants grown locally? Mud snails are invasive in Michigan: https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/Invasives/fact/NewZealandMudsnail.html If you do a google...

The two things I see that look like snails in that pic are long with a lot of whorles - so doesn't look like the typical pest physa. They look somewhat more like young trumpet snails but I'm not 100% on that. If they are, it's somewhat rare for those to turn into a pest problem and usually they...

Stop feeding the corals and do a larger WC if your nitrate is out of control. I see GSP, some sort of sps, and some type of long polyp leather in addition to the cloves - none of those eat so the food will just be going to waste. Even LPS that can eat often don't need to be fed except in...

Probably not; it's unlikely to harm anything it brushes against. If removed, the urchin may very well grab it again or it could easily drift into a crevice where it wouldn't make it. Single unattached zoa's usually don't have a great survival rate unless put in a protected container with rubble...

I'm not familiar with that genus and so not sure on the specific species but the Bithynia genus looks more promising than my original Viviparid guess. Viviparids typically aren't speckled when small and I've not seen one with the points on the sides of the front of the foot like yours shows...

Although not impossible for physa, dextral shells are exceedingly rare in the pest physa species since it only appears as a mutation. Doesn't look like Lymnaea either to me which I think has some dextral species. If you can get a side pic that would help but I know that can be tough. Given you...

Forgot to add, I would not feed vegetables or anything similar to Cerithoids. They really need to feed from detritis/algae most of the time to avoid water quality issues since they don't eat much compared to something like an apple snail. They will sometimes eat algae wafers but I imagine the...

Not familiar with the particular species but looks to be in Cerithoidea, a group of which I've kept many other species. The degree to which snails in that group stay burrowed varies. Some species will hardly ever be seen above the substrate except to lay eggs. Sometimes the type of substrate...

Highly unlikely that they would be the same species. The large ornamental fan worms practically never reproduce in aquariums. More likely it's one of the smaller hitchhiker species. Could also be a larger type of vermetid snails if you haven't seen the fans; the shells can look similar. I don't...

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Are you doing a deep sand bed or just a thin layer? Since it sounds like you're getting a good amount of LR, if you're only doing a thin sand layer then you won't see much perk in live sand vs dry as far as cycling goes, but the live sand bags I see these days tend to have a better grain size...

Interesting! I don't recognize those offhand. They look segmented but that says little ID-wise for marine worms. It at least doesn't look like any of the harmful types to me. Most likely just some harmless little detritivores given where they are hanging out.

The type of change in growth this snail is showing is often the result of factors other than just pH/KH. Temperature is a big one - apple snails often grow darker, thicker shells at colder temperatures. If a snail from a colder environment is put in a warm one, its metabolism will speed up and...

Just a side note to add in: I've moved this thread over to tropical discussion.

Unfortunately I can't tell what's going on in the photo. For taking pics clearly you need to turn off your actinics (blues) and if it's at night possibly use flash or temporarily turn the white on so that some colors other than blue and black get picked up. Many phone cameras do very poorly...

A loooooooooong pipette...with an itty bitty bulb. Because the bulb is tiny, it holds almost nothing. It's also so unwieldy I end up getting my hands wet anyway, thereby defeating the point of its length. I went back to using a turkey baster pretty fast lol.

Marine can be expensive, yes - very expensive if you get all the bells and whistles for everything. Not everyone does that though and you don't have to. If doing fish it will always be somewhat more expensive than fw, but the idea of needing "lots of chemicals" is a bad way to view things. You...

Indeed, it's too small and the shell on those snails is VERY thin even in healthy individuals, so it would likely do a lot more harm than good attempting any kind of fix. The photo does look a bit odd to me though - it's a bit hard to interpret. At a glance it does look like a big section of...

Have you double-checked the reading with another test kit (such as at a LFS)? Could also be you got "live" sand that was actually dead. If it was exposed to prolonged high heat in transit or if it simply sat on the shelf for a really long time, the bacteria will have died off and it will be...

Sudden cloudiness in a marine tank can be due to a number of things... - bacterial bloom (won't necessarily see a chemical spike) - phytoplankton bloom (often looks cloudy before going green if it isn't killed off or consumed by filter-feeders) - macroalgae releasing spores (look for macro that...

Brittle stars are harmless unless you plan on keeping really tiny fish like neon gobies (not biotope suitable here anyway). A good brittle star can be worth many hermits as far as forming a cleanup crew. Obligatory note regarding collection of rock/sand from beaches: taking rock specifically...

Hopefully not, already done enough of that this year. :lol: Got four from a July hatch and two more a couple weeks ago.

Sitting with my chickens this afternoon.

Is it rigid in that pose or floppy? Ordinarily I wouldn't advocate touching a coral since it adds stress but if it's floppy then there may be physical damage somewhere around the fold site. If it isn't damaged and is rigidly in that pose, then it deliberately wants to be like that and may be...

If you were collecting in a shallow area and not testing on-site, I wouldn't necessarily expect water in a tidal zone to be pristine. Water samples I collected from the New England coast a long time ago showed ammonia pretty often and even sometimes had a big nitrite spike due to plankton and...

Not the best angle for IDing but looks like a large species of Stomatella - beneficial hitchhiker. Image search on the name and see if it looks like what you've got. Usually they are pretty small but I've seen the odd one up to an inch / couple cm. They do have a shell but it's small and up...

This is a bit of an odd thing to say without stating what information you find incorrect or why. Everyone of course has different experiences in aquarium keeping and many hold different opinions on things. If you have direct counterpoints to what has been said in this thread or a different...

The two treatments I recommended aren't something you pour in - they're syringe administered and you target to the anemone itself with a small amount. Aiptasia-X and Joes Juice are two of the safest options in that regard, Aiptasia-X being the absolute safest as far as I've seen (I've even wiped...

Sorry to be the bearer or bad news here, but pest anemones aren't an indicator of anything good and can live in very extreme conditions. They can even sometimes survive freshwater drips and injections and bad water quality conditions that would kill most other things in a tank except for...

Just checked the thread again but I don't see any remarks from OP about the shell being soft? The carapace is normally kind of springy in these animals but it appears simply deformed in this case, which could have been caused by something as simple as molting in a tight place where it ended up...

Colin is right, those do appear to be the gills. They've ended up on the outside somehow. Unfortunately I've never seen that specific problem in a crustacean but plenty of other deformities can be caused by difficult molts so that could be the culprit here. Next molt could fix it or it could get...

If you do break down your tanks, hang onto your fish-related gear if you can, for a while at least. Some people will immediately throw out or sell off everything straight away when they break down a tank after getting frustrated with the hobby, but should you change your mind down the line (it...

Relatively few appear in the hobby compared to what you might find in exhaustive lists of anemone species around the world, and within that some are much more common than others. This is a classic-looking Aiptasia.

This is Aiptasia - a pest anemone that easily reproduces out of control and can carpet the rock and stress/burn any corals it comes into contact with. Yours already has some new ones that have formed near the base. Aipasia-X and Joe's Juice are two fairly safe things you can use to get rid of...

EDIT: this post is in reference to the FIRST pic in the thread. I now see there's a second (didn't see that when I wrote the text below) ----- I'm going to guess Helisoma anceps*, which is very common in the north american aquarium trade. Medium-sized individuals typically have a "corner" of...

I'm also not sure how Canada does things, but in some places in the US I've seen hermit crabs and other coastal crustaceans classified as "bait species" that can be collected legally with just a fishing license. Anyway, it's worth checking to see what can be collected as bait in the particular...

Unfortunately not really! In rare instances you can if the base is really dense and mostly large sclerites, but otherwise they will almost always tear free, either by sliming so the glue never really sticks or changing shape to pry themselves away, even if they damage themselves further in the...

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