Sea Squirt, good or bad?

[cuteios]

Hi everyone,

 

I recently aquired a little rock fragment with a mushroom and a sea squirt on it. I'm not very familiar with the sea squirts, this one is about an 1.5" and orange. anyone care to fill me in on this little creature...pros and cons please. my tank is already home to two zoo colonies, an elegance coral and a candycane. The squirt won't affect them...will it?

[tinyreef]

it shouldn't (unless it dies).

 

usually squirts and sponges die off during the curing process though so reefers usually don't have them in abundance. but it's a natural (and effective) filter. a important player in cryptic filtration. one of the reasons i (and some others) prefer to wc during curing really fresh rock (note: this can considerably lengthen the curing process tho) to try and save as much as the hitchhiking fauna/flora as possible. (e.g. sponges, tunicates, worms, pods, etc.)

 

i'd try and keep it. myself, i just finished my cryptic refugium on my display tank. they serve a significant filtration role imo. some are very beautiful and funky-looking.

 

they should feed off ambient bacteria, nanoplankton, organics, 'marine snow', etc. while it can filter out similar chemicals as a protein skimmer it can also process things skimmers can't (according to tyree). ime you can pretty much just leave it alone and it should grow/multiply. watchout for predators, usually noxious/poisonous types of animals themselves (e.g. nudibranches, some snails, cowfish X) ). hth

[cuteios]

Thanks Tiny,

 

The problem now is that I'm getting some major algae trouble my little turbo snail isn't cutting it anymore. I just noticed that some of the algae has begun to grow on the squirt. How do I dislodge it, the algae I mean? I can't really scrub the little thing clean now.

[tinyreef]

can you use little blue-leg hermits? astrae snails?

 

if not, then you may want to manually pluck some of it off. this is basically the same as nutrient export (algae turf scrubbing). i use a hemostat or just manually depending on the accessibility.

[cjl]

The thing about squirts or tunicates( one in the same) is that they don't move once they are where they want to be. In the wild, they most likely would settle onto a place where substantial external growths could not occure like a shaded nook. My advice is to let it go and see what happens, it may die. If you try to clean it it will probably die.

[cuteios]

would you suggest I move it to a shadier location then? Maybe that will help, it has a ric on the same rock but I don't think the ric would mind a little less light.

[caja]

You certainly can try that cuteios, can't hurt to try it and the ric should be fine, but keep an eye on it and if you notice any ill effects from the lower light on the ric, move it back.

[MrKrispy]

I have a rock with a bunch of things that are either tunicates/sea squirts. Never found out for sure (see a post in the ID forum by me about tunicates). I had a couple die after they got overgrown by algae. Then a few more grew, they seem to be doing pretty good. Because I have shrooms on the rock I keep it in the corner of the tank and have water flow directed towards the "mouth" of them.