So...   tonight my dad came over to check out my first coral as he hadnt seen it yet.

During this process I was looking at it from the side and on the rock its glued to I noticed something.  I have taken a picture but please excuse it once again for it is just my cell phone and its kinda small.  Tried to blow it up and it got pixly.  Anyways....

 

 

Are these polyps?  Zoanthids?  Im not sure exactly what they are or where they came from.  I didnt purchase these or put them in the tank.?   Any help identifying what or where they came from?  Thanks for all the help everyone!!!

Also, two measley little snails is hardly enough for a 5 gal tank. You have discovered that now. One snail per gallon is a good rule of thumb but any tank will need a few less snails after it reaches a point of satisfactory biological equalibrium (1-2 years).

 

Snails eventually die and must be replaced in order to keep algae under control. So after 20 snails have done their job I still might keep almost half of them to ensure that things stay clean and I don't have to replace snails for at least 6 months. In a nano tank(under 20 gallons), it's important to remove snails when they die.

 

To help the tank be more stable, I would strongly suggest adding a sprig of Caulerpa or a clump of Cheatomorpha. These Macroalgae are an excellent way to ensure that nuisance algae will not be the dominant algae. Also, when a snail dies back behind a rock where you can't see to remove it, the Macroalgae will absorb/eat up the resulting pollution so that hair algae can't eat it. 

I love algae for it's filtration effects and it just looks beautiful to me. Here is a pic of a tank with a lot of algae. There was a good reason it had that much algae. And the pic after that is how a small tank can look.

 

 

 

So my question back to you is what am I to do with all these extra snails after the algea has been terminated?  Just get rid of them?  Leave them in there?  There are already two in there and as stated before its only a five gallon tank.  Its not going to cause a spike in nitrates or anything else?

 

Once again thank you for the very informing response and am excited to hear back from you once again.

 

Sorry, I didn't see your post back in February. Let me get right down to what I would have suggested then. The pics then show me a tank that is ripe for an algae problem. There are two reasons for this:

1- no algae whatsoever growing in the new tank

2- it appears there were no snails in the new tank, yet algae was clearly growing on the glass.

 

So now, a month later my advice is pretty much the same as it would have been then with one exception. Now instead of keeping things controlled, it's going to be a game of catch up.

 

In order to catch up and clean up that algae before it gets so bad that you give up the hobby(which could happen within a week or two), the tank needs more snails than if we could have caught it earlier. It needs about 20 snails IMMEDIATELY (there are 5 hermits already, that's enough for a 5 gal tank). Buy them for less than the LFS from Chad here on the MB. Hopefully he has three types, Astrea, Margarita and Cerith. Get at least 5 of each type.

 

Also, the lights need to be turned off and the tank covered for 2 days and then on the 3rd day uncover it and use only actinic(blue) light for a day, then repeat the procedure at least one more time. The lack of light stops the algae from growing and the snails can then eat it while the lights are off. They are mostly nocturnal.

Since it's probably impossible in this situation to do just blue light, I'd try one of these options:

1- turn on the least amount of light for 2 hours off for a few hours then on again for 2 hours

2- over the white side of the PC light and just let the blue side shine for the usual amount of time that day

3- raise the light fixture about a foot above the tank and run the light for no more than 6 hours/day until you can see some success with the snails.

 

At this point you are probably wondering what the hec do I know and why am I so specific in my instructions on what to do... Who is this guy Mark Peterson?

Well, I'm a total reef geek that just loves to help hobbyists avoid the pitfalls of keeping a reef aqaurium. I helped start this club about 15 years ago because I had a similar problem with hair algae. The "Readers Digest" version of that story is here: www.garf.org/ugly.html The more detailed version is in the February 2002 SeaStar newsletter (see the tab over to the left)

I also have written a lot of Tips and How to's regarding keeping reef aqauriums. That stuff is here if you want to read it. You have already passed the first part of what I wrote but it wouldn't hurt to read it anyway. You might pick up a thing or two. http://www.utahreefs.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=9244

 

Have fun and please feel free to call me to discuss any of this or to ask my opinion on any other reefkeeping topic.