Stomatella snail?

justaDutchguy · Jul 24, 2015

They are beautifull animals, have great benifits and are amazing to watch.
I bred a huge colony by accident as i emptied my 10g for all but substrate and water. I just didn't find time to fully empty and clean it. After 4 months of looking into it, being quite astonished by the amazing capability of some creatures to survive (most pests ofcourse), i could see about 80 tiny little stomatella's roaming about.
Slowly watching them grow the next 1-2 months, i started trasferring them to my 90g DT.
They now are everywhere, and i can't see ANY disadvantage to them. Theyr spawn probably ends up being great coral food, and the few that survive, well, let's see what colours and stripes they get!

justaDutchguy · Jul 24, 2015

Btw, the levels in this non active tank went to points where you'd say nithing would survive. Yet bristle worms, snails and aiptaisia survived and reproduces. Aiptaisia went all tiny and bleached out tho, but it made me realise that there is no way to keep them out of a system, they probably survived a couple of appocalypses.

hig789 · Jul 24, 2015

Well I've seen it twice today on my zoas so maybe there is more than one. I'm blue green color blind and I can't for the life of me see it when it's not on a closed zoa. They do move around a whole lot faster than the astraeas that's for sure.

bobbychullo · Jul 24, 2015

aiptasia are so resilient. I have personally witnessed them releasing their hold on rockwork and floating in the tank and re-attching at a point they land on. They can also slowly "crawl" thru your aquarium, I have never seen this tho. I was able to suck one out with a turkey basterwhen it decided to float in my tank. I put it in a tupperware bowl with some tank water in it and brought it to work for the day. It lived the entire day, not even stressed, just sitting in a bowl of water on my desk. the only way I could kill it (and even then it may not have died) was to flood the bowl with dish soap and hot water. it still took it a few seconds to release, you could see it was fighting to hold on at first.

when I first noticed my stomatella i was stoked. then every night after that I would see another one, the only way I could tell they were different was when one night they all came out at once. now ive got babies showing up...