astrea shells hosting small fanworms??

[krullulon]

my astreas are covered with small fanworms -- there are over a dozen 1" high thin white spikes covering the shells of most of them, and the top of each spike has a little fan plume so i'm guessing it's a fanworm of some kind. my other snails don't have the same things going on (my similarly-shaped trochus snails are bare), so it's curious.

i'll get a picture later, but does this sound familiar to anyone? my only concern is that these are parasitic worms and they're damaging the shells of the snails...

thanks!

JP

 

[Len]

These small fanworms are harmless and incapable of boring through calcite (at least not to any damaging degree). I'd love to see some pics. I've seen some shells covered with various inverts like fanworms and polyps, but not specific to one type of snail. Curious indeed

 

[krullulon]

here are a couple of pics of the worm totin' astreas:

ignore the bubble algae in the first pic please. 8)

 

[krullulon]

here's a NEW! IMPROVED! pic of the snail and his posse of about 40 worms -- the worms are starting to grow these weird white funnel-shaped discs at the top of the white tubes. definitely not your average fan worm:

improved picture quality due to the fact that i finally got a tripod. 8)

that's a lot of worms on that little snail! the new shell growth pattern is pretty cool too.

 

[Mihai]

Super-cool pictures! I like the background too.
M.

 

[Anonymous]

That looks like algae to me, not tubeworms, FWIW.

There are some polyps that will only colonize certain snail shells as well. A prof here at UCD studies one of them, it's a hydroid that only lives on the shell of one genus of snail in tidepools. Very weird.

 

[Anonymous]

They are algae. The top is like a plate with a radial marking... they usually will disappear (go sexual) pretty quick after the plate is developed.

The second pic is a much, much better pic. Good job.

 

[krullulon]

Super-cool pictures! I like the background too.
M.

thanks!

That looks like algae to me, not tubeworms, FWIW.

They are algae. The top is like a plate with a radial marking... they usually will disappear (go sexual) pretty quick after the plate is developed.

ah, i was wondering about that. i noticed that the "plates" started breaking down within just a few days of forming, which seemed odd for a worm. very cool algae though!

The second pic is a much, much better pic. Good job.

thanks -- now that the first wave of hair algae in my tank is going away picture quality is more than an academic exercise.

 

[J.Howard]

I have some turbo snails with little feather duster like worms hitching a ride. So it does happen. Kinda neat w/the algae growth, never seen anything quite like that. It's like a mobile nutrient sponge!

 

[HClH2OFish]

Snails can get some of the weirdest things growing on em...
My fave LFS here in town has one that's got some SPS growing on it's shell! I think it's a green brain IIRC...I'll see if I can get em to take a pic next time I'm in