Weird thingys on glass (w/pic)

[Otocinclus]

I have these small things all over the glass of my new 10g tank. I have seen this many times before in new FW tanks, I just never bothered to care too much.

I guess for the most part I am now curious. What are these things? Are they harmful? How/why do they break out in a new tank setup?

They almost look like unicell critters. I tried to take a pic of them but they are way too small. Much larger than a grain of sand, but much smaller than a pin head. I have attached a drawing that I think describes them pretty well:

Thingys:
http://home.winfirst.net/spawrage/tank/thing.jpg

The center of them is white, and they have a small translucent layer of something around their edges. There is also an off-white looking thing in the center of them, but its always off a little to the side (not dead center) They are only on the glass.

Should I be concerned?

Thanks for any feedback.

[OrionGirl]

Sound somewhat like baby snails. Have you touched them?

[Otocinclus]

Thanks for the reply - I highly doubt they are snails. They have no shell, and move v e r y s l o w l y. I guess they are very close to the size of a small pinhead, I would expect to see shells at this size.

I did a bleach dip on all plants before I introduced them. If they are snails, I will be pissed off :mad:

[OrionGirl]

Baby snail shells are tiny--and often nearly transparent. Hmmm...What else? How long do they last?

[Otocinclus]

I dont know, just saw them for the first time this morning. In the past I have seen them last over a month, but dont get any bigger than ~3mm. Yesterday I planted a bunch of Java fern. The tank is only about 3 weeks old. Link (http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35297)

[phanmc]

Yeah, sounds like a snail. You'll start seeing the shell in a week.

[Otocinclus]

Sigh... :thud:

So what should I do, remove my 5 amano's and dose to hell with copper?

Snails will make my tank look horrible. Id rather have no tank at all than one with snails.

Thanks for the replies..

[OrionGirl]

Snails are easy to control--they only get out of hand when there is too much food. Limit food to what is eaten, and clean the substrate/filter often, and you shouldn't see an explosion of them. I have a 5 that gets fed daily, has 4 fish, and a total of three snails. That's it. They will somoetimes lay eggs, but I never get any new snails because there isn't the food available to support them.

[RTR]

They could also be FW limpets, which never get large.

[kveeti]

This is a picture of a FW limpet at 60x, it never grows bigger than a pinhead. I had them and they were kinda cute and inconspicuous but I haven't spotted any in over a year. I don't know what happened to them.

http://members.shaw.ca/kveetka/x_l11.jpg

[Otocinclus]

Thanks for that pic kveeti. When I first saw the critters that is exactly what came to mind - limpets. I have never actually heard of them before, but this is indeed what they look like.

Even with that said, I fear they might be snails. A few of them are (well, were :) ) developing what looked like shells. They crunch a little when I smash them up.

Rather than waiting around and getting frustrated, I have been working on removing them for the last few days. I take a clean bamboo skewer, and smash them on the glass whenever I see them. I think so far I have managed to eliminate ~75% of what originally hatched.

I see snails as a disease like herpes. You can get rid of 98% of the 'symptoms' but unless you do something drastic you will always be infected.

I am just going to do as OrionGurl mentioned and try to manually remove everything that I can, whenever I can. I finally have the tank looking very nice, it would be a shame to let snails get in the way.. My little Jungle (http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35566)

Thanks for all the feedback…