Keiron1986
New Member
Hi people. How soon should brown algae start in my tank? It's been cycling for a week and a half and covered. Thanks
Algae
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I don't understand what you mean by "covered." Is the tank covered in the brown stuff? If so, the timing sounds fairly normal, but you probably have diatoms (brown dusty stuff) rather than proper algae. Green and brown encrusting and fluffy algaes usually show up a little more slowly.
Keiron1986
New Member
Thanks for the reply. The whole tank, sand and rock. Also in my live rock I have fan worms a snail two slugs, bristle worms to other types of worms not sure of, starfish shrimp like things. Is this all normal?
Yep! That's all completely normal. Sounds like you got some good-quality rock that brought in a lot of beneficial animals.
Keiron1986
New Member
Are the bristle worm not bad thing? Some of them are massive and there is loads of them. Thanks for your help
As long as you have these guys:
http://www.reefs.org/hhfaq/worms/faq_bristle.jpg/variant/medium
which are often in the Eurythoe genus and related genenera, then everything should be fine. There is one similar-looking exception, Hermodice carunculata, but those worms are rather rare as hitchhikers.
Eurythoe worms are usually harmless as long as you don't touch them. I can't say always harmless, but when not allowed to become dominant in the system, they are beneficial scavengers. The situations under which they create problems are when the tank is massively overfed with nothing to keep the worms in check (predators include some crabs, coral banded shrimp, and some wrasses), so you can get a huge population boom of bristleworms and also very large individual worms. When that happens, broken bristles can start to accumulate in the sand and attempts to starve out the worms can cause them to mob other things in the tank out of desperation. That said, they are not something to be afraid of. It would be very hard to find a marine tank without a few hiding in the rocks somewhere - they really are that common. As a precaution, some people use tongs to remove any large worms that become bold enough to come out during the day (usually a sign that they are hungrier than normal).
Do make sure that's the type of worm you are seeing though. Two other types of hichhiker worms that are often called "bristleworms" are Eunicid species (5 tentacles on the head, some are ok and others grow scarey big) and Oenone fulgida (bad, a snail predator). However, these two are far less common than the typical Eurythoe sort of worm.
http://www.reefs.org/hhfaq/worms/faq_bristle.jpg/variant/medium
which are often in the Eurythoe genus and related genenera, then everything should be fine. There is one similar-looking exception, Hermodice carunculata, but those worms are rather rare as hitchhikers.
Eurythoe worms are usually harmless as long as you don't touch them. I can't say always harmless, but when not allowed to become dominant in the system, they are beneficial scavengers. The situations under which they create problems are when the tank is massively overfed with nothing to keep the worms in check (predators include some crabs, coral banded shrimp, and some wrasses), so you can get a huge population boom of bristleworms and also very large individual worms. When that happens, broken bristles can start to accumulate in the sand and attempts to starve out the worms can cause them to mob other things in the tank out of desperation. That said, they are not something to be afraid of. It would be very hard to find a marine tank without a few hiding in the rocks somewhere - they really are that common. As a precaution, some people use tongs to remove any large worms that become bold enough to come out during the day (usually a sign that they are hungrier than normal).
Do make sure that's the type of worm you are seeing though. Two other types of hichhiker worms that are often called "bristleworms" are Eunicid species (5 tentacles on the head, some are ok and others grow scarey big) and Oenone fulgida (bad, a snail predator). However, these two are far less common than the typical Eurythoe sort of worm.
Keiron1986
New Member
Yes that looks the same as what I have. the biggest one I have seen must be about 7/8 inch long lol. could you answer a couple more questions for me does a tank always cycle an release a spike of ammonia? and both my slugs have shells on there back one is black the other one a lighter colour do you no what these are please? thanks for help
Ammonia spikes usually occur, taking anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks to go away completely depending on tank size and how much the rock was beaten up in transport. Nutrient spikes can also disappear pretty fast and/or be gobbled up straight away by the biological filtration if the rock is high quality and not much transport-related die-off has occurred. If you are seeing a spike right now, just wait it out. If there's no spike, then give it a few more days just to be safe and make sure you keep an eye on nitrite too. Sometimes you can miss one spike but the other one will still show up.
It's hard to do IDs without a picture. The only things I can think of offhand would be Stomatella snails (all sorts of colors) or Scutus species (often black with a white shell).
It's hard to do IDs without a picture. The only things I can think of offhand would be Stomatella snails (all sorts of colors) or Scutus species (often black with a white shell).
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