This Trumped my LFS

[ClownSchool]

I’m new to reef tanks and was gifted a Biocube 16, and that’s all it took to get me hooked.
After 4 months of slowly building up my live rock, something happened that stumped my Local Fish Store:
Not knowing about dips yet, I added all the rock staring hot in - some with green algae build-up already on - so I pulled my rock out yesterday into my water change buckets and scrubbed some algae off with a clean toothbrush. I also found, and removed, two good sized bristle worms.
When I placed the rocks back in the tank and completed the water change, multiple opens in multiple rocks began ejected HUGE amounts of white, thick... ‘milk’...that filled the entire tank.
The closest my LFS guy could guess was that my water change temp - which, I float in a sink of hot water to get up to temp - was just cool enough to simulate a ‘spring rain’ and caused all the bristle worms still in the rocks to spawn!
...ewwww.
But, as this was only their closest guess, I wondered if anyone else has a better explanation?
my water tested 8-8.2 hp, Ammonia -.05, NO2 was 0 and NO3 -.05, but today showed NO3 climbing.

* On another note, I added a neon dottyback and coral banded shrimp last night to combat the worms - if that’s what it was - and the shrimp’s arms had fallen off through the night, but the dottyback has been a total champ!

Thanks for any input you have and I’m happy to be here!

 

[Fred2482]

Welcome! Hopefully someone has experience that will be able to help.

 

[KrisReef]

Obviously your live rock was spawning after a spring tide simulated by the previous low that occured when you took the rock out of the water.

(I have no clue, but I did have fun thinking about your situation. )
Welcome to Reef2Reef!

 

[Billldg]

Welcome to R2R!!!

 

[MERKEY]

Hello and welcome to R2R!

 

[SPR1968]

Hi and welcome to Reef2Reef!

 

[Salty Rambler]

Welcome to R2R! That's a new one to me.

 

[harley32907]

Welcome to R2R!

 

[DH78]

Welcome! Unfortunately, your situation is unknown to me. Hopefully someone else will be able help.

 

[Weasel1960]

Welcome to R2R, maybe @vetteguy53081 knows or knows who to ask.

 

[Jimbhoy13]

Welcome to R2R. Not heard of that before. A video of it would have been interesting. Hope someone can help you.

 

[KJ]

Welcome to R2R!!!

 

[BostonReefer300]

Welcome to R2R! If there's a giant plume emanating from your rocks due to something spawning, I'd recommend grabbing your family and running away from your house before the Kraken emerges! Maybe an expert or super long-timer knows more than me about this, but I doubt it's a spawning event. My first guess is that your rocks had a bunch of sediment in it that loosened up sitting in your tank water for a while and then further loosened up when you cleaned them. When you put them back in, the water flooded into the rocks and blew the sediment loose. Anyway, that's my guess---and I wouldn't be surprised if you saw a nutrient spike (NO3 and PO4) after a few days. One way or the other, keep monitoring the health of your inhabitants and check ammonia a couple times a day just in case the "plume" starts overloading your biofilter. If you do see an ammonia spike, do a partial water change right away and treat with Prime.
Regarding bristleworms, you'll find differing opinions about them but I think the majority of R2Rers (is that what we call ourselves?) would say they are beneficial clean up crew members (as long as they're regular bristleworms and not fireworms or, heaven forbid, bobbit worms). HTH and have fun!

 

[CMMorgan]

Wow! That's a new one .... ewww. Sorry to hear about your troubles. I hope it gets better. Welcome to the salty family. Keep us posted...

 

[Birdbrains?]

Welcome to Reef2Reef. Perhaps it could be something living in the rocks which reacted by covering itself in slime to prevent drying out. Once I removed a few LR and left them in an empty bucket, before discovering a single peanut worm that survived inthere for about a month. I have no idea how it survived without water but there had been a little sand in the bottom of the bucket, so with the moisture trapped in the bucket, the peanut worm apparently had just enough moisture to cling to life that long. When I found it, the worm had partly dried out in one end of its body. It was sticking out of the very top of the LR as if desperately trying to find some source of moisture before it was too late for it, so I put it into a 5L cube I use for live food stuffs, and the peanutworm rehydrated and recovered. As far as I know, there are a lot of marine lifeforms which can create a slime layer to prevent drying out, so possibly it was just these kinds of slime layers being released, once various organisms discovered that they did not need the protective layer anymore.

 

[TCoach]

Welcome to R2R!!!

 

[WVNed]

I think I am going to agree with the LFS.

 

[Poof No Eyebrows]

Welcome

 

[PeterC99]

Welcome to R2R!

Love hearing stories about Reefers getting hooked on the hobby!

 

[vetteguy53081]

Neither will combat the worms. An arrow crab however will. The scrubbing if algae is a typical practice and the slime you saw is likely bacteria and dead matter that was loosened. I recommend adding a pouch of chemipure blue to eliminate any toxins that May emerge and for water clarity