Hard Red-Brownish Tube Like Thing Growing From Torch Frag HELP!

imanewberry · Dec 28, 2019

I just bought a new torch coral frag from my LFS that was open and beautiful when purchased. Whenever I got it home and it was closed up, I noticed something hard and dark growing from the skeleton of the coral. The coral is currently in coral dip and I didn’t think to grab a picture before I removed the hard abscess from the frag. There is now a dark dot on the coral skeleton because whatever is growing inside of the coral I can’t remove with tweezers. This is the first time I’ve bought a coral that has had something strange looking on it and unfortunately I do not have a QT tank setup to observe it. What should I do?

Whenever I take the coral out of the dip I will take a picture and post it but it’s just going to be a dark spot on the torch skeleton because I tweezed the rest off. I’m worried about putting it into my DT because I’m very hesitant of getting any unwanted pests or parasites (as we all are, I think). Any ideas?

EDIT: Here are pics of what I broke off of the coral skeleton and what the skeleton looks like post dipping

KJ · Dec 28, 2019

Pic help ID.

El_Guapo13 · Dec 28, 2019

Without a pic I can't be certain, but it sounds like a vermited snail. Does it look like these tubes on the larger snail:

If so, definitely a vermited.

imanewberry · Dec 28, 2019

I’m pretty certain this is what it is. It’s the only thing that very closely resembles what I plucked off of my coral before dipping. I have a friend who has a coral QT tank that is available to use. Should I go the safe route and take the coral there and QT it for a few weeks? Will the coral dip kill off the vermetid?

imanewberry · Dec 28, 2019

Just posted pics

El_Guapo13 · Dec 28, 2019

Looks like broken pieces of vermited to me. They aren't really bad, but are more of an annoyance than a threat.

They feed by letting out a mucus web like a fishing line to catch any scraps of food they can. This web can get caught on corals, which in turn get irritated by being touched by the web. So like I said. More of an annoyance than anything else.

But they reproduce fast. Very fast. Most reefers deal with them by crushing them or super gluing their ends so they die in their shell. As for natural ways of population control, the only thing I have heard of that might, emphasis MIGHT, eat them are bumblebee snails. I am actually planning to get a few tomorrow to see if they do go for them, or if they end up only going for small worms.

So quarantine is not really necessary, but its up to you. Just try your best to get that remainig part off, as the snail would often retreat to that part when we try to crush the tube, meaning we just end up killing an empty tube. I saw someone earlier suggest using cuticle cutters on vermiteds, so if tou have some you can use that to cut off the remaining part.