cysts on plants

[wataugachicken]

today i scraped 6 cysts off the leaves of several of my plants. i have anubias, amazon swords, and cabomba, though only the swords and anubias are being affected.

the cysts are very tiny, oval-shaped, and look silvery-gray in the tank. i can scrape them off with my fingernail and outside of the tank they are clear with a dark spot in the middle. they don't move and they are not hard, but sort of crunchy. i can break them easily. when i remove them, there are no spots or damage on the area of the leaf underneath them.

i want to assume that these are egg sacs of some kind, though i haven't seen any kind of bugs in my tank. suggestions?

 

[SnakeIce]

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/fraidnot7/detail?.dir=989b&.dnm=94c8.jpg&.src=ph
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/fraidnot7/detail?.dir=989b&.dnm=8173.jpg&.src=ph
Did they look like the limpets in those pictures? most freshwater limpets stay small. Your description would describe the ones I had perfectly.

 

[wataugachicken]

yes, that's it exactly. are they bad in any way? i smushed them and then i rinsed them down the sink.

 

[SnakeIce]

functionally they aren't any different than small snails, they don't eat plants. If you had conditions just right for them they might get unsightly covering things, but the same good maintenance things like not over feeding and gravel vaccuming that keep snail populations from growing work for these guys. I haven't done anything special and my population is declineing.