Vermetid snail infestation

Oropher

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It's going out of hand. Rocks and now backwall, and also bottom of LPS.

I cannot pick it out or glue it or smash one by one since they are so many.

Tried the bumblebee to kill those vermetid snails but no luck.

Is there a way to kill those pests?

I'm considering tearing down my rock and have all the corals sit on egg crate after I cleaned them, to eradicate vermetid snails.

Help.

Thanks folks.
 

Jon Fishman

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Is your rock-work cemented/glued/attached or just “stacked?”

How big of a tank?

If you can get a storage tub and just pull a few pieces out at a time and get medieval with needle-nose pliers..... it’s a lot easier than you think.
 

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I'm in the same situation. I have a 30 gallon tank that was infested with vermetid snails. I ended up removing all of the live rock and replacing it with Marco rock that I have been cycling for over a year. My thought was I could depend on the marine pure for biological filtration when replacing the rock. This did not work. The tank and corals handled the rock replacement without issue, but the vermetid snails all came back within a few months. I tried bumble bee snails too without any luck. I honestly think I will need to start completely over if I want to get rid of these pest...
 

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Ugh, I hate those and they are really hard to get rid of. Like others suggested, try manually removing as many as you can. And review your feeding habits. They love particulates in the water column, so rinse off your frozen food and avoid foods with lot of small particles for a while till you get them to manageable populations. Also try using a sock or filter floss after feeding.
 

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A lot of times calcerous polychaete are confused with vermetid snails. Typically if it's an infestation of thin calcerous tubes it most likely isn't a vermetid at all. If you don't see any mucous webbing then you don't have vermetid snails and they are of no harm.
 
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Is your rock-work cemented/glued/attached or just “stacked?”

How big of a tank?

If you can get a storage tub and just pull a few pieces out at a time and get medieval with needle-nose pliers..... it’s a lot easier than you think.

Glued together. Also the corals are glued on the rock formation.
It's a pico tank 10G.
 
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20191031_200547.jpg
 

DSC reef

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Can't see the rocks very well in that pic. If you don't notice any mucus webbing then I wouldn't worry about it.
 
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Oropher

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Ugh, I hate those and they are really hard to get rid of. Like others suggested, try manually removing as many as you can. And review your feeding habits. They love particulates in the water column, so rinse off your frozen food and avoid foods with lot of small particles for a while till you get them to manageable populations. Also try using a sock or filter floss after feeding.

Underwater it's hard to make sure that I can pull out the calcerous shell with the animal inside. They tend to retract.

The last 3 months I had the tank fallowed. No fish, no food. Weekly target feeding the LPS, small amount. Still the population of vermetid seemed expanded greatly during this fallow period.
 
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Oropher

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Can't see the rocks very well in that pic. If you don't notice any mucus webbing then I wouldn't worry about it.
Only if I stirred the sand then the web like mucus started to sprung.
I'll try to take pics with tighter fov to show the infestation once the reef light shining.
Thanks though.
 

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Only if I stirred the sand then the web like mucus started to sprung.
I'll try to take pics with tighter fov to show the infestation once the reef light shining.
Thanks though.
That could be a response from the corals from stirring the sand bed. Vermetid will throw webbing directly from the stem. Sometimes people remove things that are no harm to the reef tank and beneficial to biodiversity
 

Dave Garrett

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These are the worst pest in a tank in my opinion...Seems many frags come in with them... Hard to see in a mini Acan colony when they are between the polyps... I have found nothing that controls them.... The Nuclear Option is the only true way of getting rid of them... And then the next frag you put in might just repopulate your whole tank again
 

jordan10

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A lot of times calcerous polychaete are confused with vermetid snails. Typically if it's an infestation of thin calcerous tubes it most likely isn't a vermetid at all. If you don't see any mucous webbing then you don't have vermetid snails and they are of no harm.
My LFS said they where some type of algae. Nothing comes out head just little round spilroll with a tube come out not very long. Think he could be right?
 

eschaton

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I don't understand people treating them like the black plague.

I mean yeah, they can irritate corals with their mucus nets, but corals can irritate one another if they touch as well.

Just manually remove them in areas that are close to your SPS and LPS. If they're growing in areas like your overflow, sump, or skimmer, don't worry about it. If you're tearing apart your tank and removing live rock it's almost certainly throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

If you have them everywhere you might want to consider your feeding regimen though, as others have noted. Any life form in our tank expands if you're feeding something it loves in high amounts.
 

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My LFS said they where some type of algae. Nothing comes out head just little round spilroll with a tube come out not very long. Think he could be right?
The only algae that I'm aware of that is calcerous would be coralline and that can encrust of the tubes.
 

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