Hitchhiker SPD on Snail?

[Michael Stetz]

I found a weird branch coming off an astrea snail today. A picture is worth a thousand words so here's a few.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Vermatid snail. Just pop it off the shell.

 

[Michael Stetz]

Is it harmful?

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Not really. They spread and spit little mucus strings that can irritate some corals. Some folks get a lot of them and it's yucky.

 

[Michael Stetz]

Mucus strings eh, that doesn't really sound aesthetically pleasing ;-) good bye vermatid snail.

 

[Maggie321]

I has one and couldn't for the life of me pop it off the snail shell. I covered mine in superglue and released the snail back in the tank

 

[Michael Stetz]

Good idea Maggie. I was able to pluck this off by hand. I really scraped at it with my nail to try to make sure it doesn't come back because there seemed to be a black base that the branch was attached to.

I wonder if this is something I will have to look out for now or if it was an isolated incident. Did you notice any more after trapping it in glue?

 

[Maggie321]

I only noticed 2 originally. One on a piece of live rock I got from LFS and I just crushed it. And the other on the snail. It's too soon to tell if there will be more