Vermetid Snails- The undefeatable pest

[Radman73]

I got rid of mine with a decent sized lunare wrasse. I think there is a thread somewhere about it. Regardless, I hated them and they are gone now after the introduction.

Thanks. Almost 10pm and now I'll spend at least an hour researching the lunare wrasse and what it's compatible with lol!

 

[NowGlazeIT]

They do if you bludgeon and scrape them . But, you do have to get all the way to the base.

Scrape, slice, dice and everything nice but you can’t just break the shell off and call her done. They like to go flat up against the surface after losing the shell. They look like tiny red worms. At least the buggers I’ve messed with. So I broke the shell exposing the wormy lookin snail, then dipped in brayer. I’m 2 years in the clear but I was not diligent during inspection on my last coral purchase. I dipped in brayer but forgot to inspect and brush off the hard skeleton. Now I see I have once again added vermetid snails into my system. I will try to scrape slice n dice but I’m worried the snails will survive and reattach somewhere else. I should have just pulled the coral out and re did the dip but alas propagation is too risky. Also the coral was expensive and doing well haha

 

[Radman73]

So, lights out. I took a flashlight and explored the tank. Found 2 bumble bee snails that are definitely munching on vermetid snail tubes. I might order another 30. Maybe 50 lol! Put a few in the overflow and maybe they can clean up the plumbing as I bet they're nasty and packed with vermetids.

One of my emerald crabs was scraping the tubes, but it didn't appear that he was actually destroying them and then eating the snail. Oh well.

 

[DraggingTail]

Mine only grow under my rock work. They must not like MHs.

 

[DraggingTail]

So, lights out. I took a flashlight and explored the tank. Found 2 bumble bee snails that are definitely munching on vermetid snail tubes. I might order another 30. Maybe 50 lol! Put a few in the overflow and maybe they can clean up the plumbing as I bet they're nasty and packed with vermetids.

One of my emerald crabs was scraping the tubes, but it didn't appear that he was actually destroying them and then eating the snail. Oh well.

Maybe that's why I have very few. I have like 100 little bumblebee snails. Of course now they are all purple.

 

[html]

I saw sometimes like my melonarus wrasse broke them and eat

 

[living_tribunal]

Would a canary wrasse help? Mine consumes just about any pest it can find.

 

[yan2pr]

I can honestly say that bumblebee snails worked for me, i had a lot of vermetid snails in every single rock of my tank and that web thing they use to feed was bothering a lot of my corals, bur as soon i throw some snails in they started to work. Now i can barely find any vermetid in the rock. It took a while of course it did not happen overnight but bumblebee snails saved the day.

 

[krash7172]

I'm not giving a yay or nay to bumblebees but I do have them. My vermetids are in check with me only smashing their bases when I see them.

 

[radiata]

I have all kinds of things to help me reach and even more places where it's pretty much impossible to reach without jumping in lol!

If only I had a toddler who could snorkel and be trusted to not pee.

Pee isn't all that evil. People have used it to cycle their tanks ~ it contains lots of ammonia!

 

[Urban]

Would a canary wrasse help? Mine consumes just about any pest it can find.

One that I forgot to add, but tried also... The canary wrasse was the first addition to the tank when I first began trying to address the vermetid problem. Many months have passed and I have not seen any indication of him even showing an interest, even those that I had crushed within the tank. I also had no luck with the emerald crabs, and funny enough, some of those guys even wound up with vermetids growing on their exoskeleton:

 

[radiata]

One that I forgot to add, but tried also... The canary wrasse was the first addition to the tank when I first began trying to address the vermetid problem. Many months have passed and I have not seen any indication of him even showing an interest, even those that I had crushed within the tank. I also had no luck with the emerald crabs, and funny enough, some of those guys even wound up with vermetids growing on their exoskeleton:

<SNIP><SNIP><SNIP><SNIP>

Hmmm... Got to wonder if they just can't reach them with their pincers and are waiting for their own molt to finish them off...

 

[Dave haddix]

I tried to post a video but can’t figure out how to do that. I actually saw a bumblebee snail eating vermitid snails. I couldn’t get close enough to get the macro pics at the time but I took a bumblebee out and put it in a bowl and added some pellets. I just couldn’t figure out how a bb snail could eat anything encased in a 1inch tube. Soon as I put the food in the container with the bb snail a long appendage comes out of the snail almost 2 inches long!! I’ll try the video again and see if I can get it to load.

 

[NowGlazeIT]

I tried to post a video but can’t figure out how to do that. I actually saw a bumblebee snail eating vermitid snails. I couldn’t get close enough to get the macro pics at the time but I took a bumblebee out and put it in a bowl and added some pellets. I just couldn’t figure out how a bb snail could eat anything encased in a 1inch tube. Soon as I put the food in the container with the bb snail a long appendage comes out of the snail almost 2 inches long!! I’ll try the video again and see if I can get it to load.

Upload to YouTube then post the link

 

[DibsOnMcRibs]

This is such an odd post for me. When I first started my tank I had them like crazy. I spent SO MUCH time crushing tubes and cut myself with a screwdriver plenty of times digging the tubes off rocks. Then I gave up. Then, one day, they vanished and I haven't seen one since. I did nothing special, have no idea why.

Hey! Same here! It’s possible my cleaner shrimp target them but I have no evidence to support that. System is about a year old but the rock came from another tank that had been running for about two and a half years

 

[Reefahholic]

We need to keep this thread open for people to come vent. It feels good when you know that you’re not the only one.

 

[marco fish]

We need to keep this thread open for people to come vent. It feels good when you know that you’re not the only one.

@Reefahholic well you know in my case what I did but for those that don’t. I added 15 emerald crabs, some green and some red. I wish now that I would have taken a video, but they quickly attacked the Vermitid snails when I put them in my tank, but what I really think was the game changer was when I found the mother Vermitid and killed it, it’s much thicker. I’d say about the thickness of a needle, it did take about 3 tries to get rid of it. First time I just crushed the tube as far as I could get down the rock it was on, that didn’t work because it came back out fast. Second time I crushed again and tried spearing the hole with a stainless pic, apparently it decided that wasn’t a good place for it and moved. Then one day doing a water change when the water level was down about to where I saw the mother previously, I found it again growing out of the base of a coral. So I chopped it again, got a long piece of stainless wire and poked as far as I could down in the hole, then I dumped a lot of glue down the hole and I have never seen it again. The emerald crabs took care of the rest within a couple of months, I had thousands of them too!!!!! I hope that this helps someone out .

 

[MegaZombi]

Crazy story but this is what happened to me and completely ridded my tank of every bad thing in it:

- I had a huge infestation of flat worms. Blankets of them everywhere. And I mean blankets - if disturbed with a turkey baster, sheets of the things would float around.

I also had horrible cyano and vermetid snails up the wazoo. Oh god did my tank suck for a while!

Anyway... I ended up dumping an entire container of chemiclean into the tank on accident. The next thing I know, clouds of red planaria flatforms are snowstorming in my tank. Ever experienced a white out in a snow storm? This was like a pink-out! I couldn't see the back wall of the tank! Unbeknown to me, the concentration of chemiclean in a full container is stronger than garlic milkshake and apparently kills red planaria faster than a one-legged man in a butt-kicking competition

For unitiated, red planaria flatworms release a toxin when they die... the same toxin that is in all deadly sea creatures! For example - the same toxin blue ring octopuses etc contain - of which there is no known cure. If you get poisoned, you tough it out and let your body metabolize it. It's the only way to survive, if you survive at all. Deadly stuff... Yeah! Those little pink flecks of paint in your tank are deadly jerks!

Anyway as soon as I see this all happening, I freak out, add a boatload of carbon, and start preparing new salt water. I took the container off the skimmer, and just let that **** overflow. Chemiclean makes your skimmer overflow, but you should have seen the color! The foam, was red! Like the goo that comes out slurpy machine! Ffffff! I think to myself. I couldn't just let that red **** back into the tank water, so I start trying to scoop pink foam out of the sump by hand into a bucket. It just continued and continued foaming, red, deadly, nasty ****. Also - this toxin has a real peculiar smell. If you've ever tried killing off flatworms before with say, Flatworm exit, it smells, of like 'sour death' - that's the only way i can describe it. My entire apartment smelled like this nasty ****!

Anyway, as soon as the flatworms start flying around the tank, fish disappear into the rockword immediately and all the corals get super ticked off and go awol. It was freaking scary!

As soon as i got my new salt water up to temperature i start replacing that death water. It's about midnight when I finish and decide to just wait and see.

The next morning, 2 tangs are dead, one adult powder blue and one yellow, despite using 2 reactors full of carbon, as well a giant penguin hob filter, packed to the brim with carbon as well... plus a 40 gallon water change... It did little to purifiy the tank. Red planaria toxin is no joke, folks.

Anyway - time goes by, and I notice that there are no longer ANY flatworms in the tank, but there are also no cyano, and no living vermetids in the tank. Well, at least something good came of this, i think to myself.

All in all, this cost me 2 prized tangs, a container of chemiclean, boatloads of carbon, my pride for screwing up the dosing for chemiclean, and my nerves for having to deal with this ordeal. Tossing all of that aside, i have to look to the bright side. What I gained was a cyano, flatworm, and a vermetid free tank. I haven't had so much as a single sign of any of these issues since then.

 

[Scorpius]

That would be nice.

Just like most things with reefing, success is a long trail of tears and failure an overnight affair.

 

[samnaz]

This is such an odd post for me. When I first started my tank I had them like crazy. I spent SO MUCH time crushing tubes and cut myself with a screwdriver plenty of times digging the tubes off rocks. Then I gave up. Then, one day, they vanished and I haven't seen one since. I did nothing special, have no idea why.

This is exactly my same experience with Vermetids.

I can tell you guys one thing for sure...I'll never use live rock ever again.

How can you be sure live rock was the only culprit? Could have come along with a coral (or frag plug if you allow those in your tank). They often do.