Coral hitchhiker

[mjleffler]

Recently bought a green star polyp and there looks to be a couple ‘slug-like’ creatures that came along with it. Whatever they are, they survived a 8 minute Brightwell Aquatics Medicoral dip. Wondering if I need to take the drag out and redip or manually remove them. Thank you

[Nathans_Reef]

First i would try re-diping the coral, they look like they are big enough to manualy remove so if dipping them again doesnt work then manually remove them. Good luck 👍

[mjleffler]

I was able to manually remove (what I thought) to be all of them, but found two more on it today. This makes me wonder whether or not they were hitchhikers or already in my tank. It’s a good possibility that I may have missed these two the first time around as I found one of them in a crevice of the plug. Wondering if anyone could give an idea of what they are so I know what I’m dealing with! Thank you.

[Tired]

Hard to tell. Can you catch some without harming them, put them in a white cup (or a clear one on a white surface) with some water, and take some clear, up-close pics?

 

They look interesting. Stomatella snails, maybe? 

 

Does anything seem irritated? 

[mjleffler]

So I’ve removed them with tweezers and from what I can tell I think that kills them pretty much instantly 😐.  It’s so hard to get a clear picture of them as they’re so small. Stomatella snails seem like a very close fit, as they are very slug like and have antennas, yet I don’t think they have a small flat shell like stomatellas do (I’ve never had stomatella snails so maybe some don’t have shells when they’re very young/small?).

[mjleffler]

The green polyps were retracted when I got home from work today, but the coral is still very new (got on Saturday) so I’m not sure if it’s just settling in or bothered by the critters.

[Tired]

If you see more, you could use a turkey baster to catch them, or put whatever they're on in a container. Heck, if you see one on the sandbed, get it with a spoon. 

 

They're possibly some sort of nudibranch, but it's hard to tell. The GSP could just be a bit annoyed, yeah. 

[mjleffler]

19 hours ago, Tired said:

If you see more, you could use a turkey baster to catch them, or put whatever they're on in a container. Heck, if you see one on the sandbed, get it with a spoon. 

 

They're possibly some sort of nudibranch, but it's hard to tell. The GSP could just be a bit annoyed, yeah. 

Managed to get one in a shot glass, this picture might be a bit clearer, my phone just does not want to focus on this little guy...

[Tired]

Oh, huh. Cute. The antenna don't look like those of a stomatella, so I'd say that's a nudibranch. The question is what it eats- a lot of them have very specific diets. If you haven't noticed any corals being eaten, it's likely not that. They could be some sort of algae-eater, could be eating some sort of sponge. 

 

IMO, leave them alone unless you see problems. For all we know, you got some sort of cool, harmless, algae-eating mini nudibranch. If they don't seem to be bothering anything, I'd say it's worth leaving them to find out what they do.

[mjleffler]

21 minutes ago, Tired said:

Oh, huh. Cute. The antenna don't look like those of a stomatella, so I'd say that's a nudibranch. The question is what it eats- a lot of them have very specific diets. If you haven't noticed any corals being eaten, it's likely not that. They could be some sort of algae-eater, could be eating some sort of sponge. 

 

IMO, leave them alone unless you see problems. For all we know, you got some sort of cool, harmless, algae-eating mini nudibranch. If they don't seem to be bothering anything, I'd say it's worth leaving them to find out what they do.

Thanks for advice! I think these guys have been stressing me out more than the corals themselves... but I’ll definitely be keeping a close eye on everything! Thanks again.