Little Stick Identification Help Please!!!

[Mamoutim]

I have a tank that is about two years old and started noticing these little sticks growing on my rocks. They are hard and can scratch your arm pretty good. Any help with an idea of how to get rid of them would be greatly appreciated.

 

[ISpeakForTheSeas]

I have a tank that is about two years old and started noticing these little sticks growing on my rocks. They are hard and can scratch your arm pretty good. Any help with an idea of how to get rid of them would be greatly appreciated. View attachment 3054637

The pic is a bit blurry and pretty blue, but my first thought would be vermetid snails. If so, the following may be helpful:

I’ve heard mixed reviews on the super glue method (but, most methods get mixed reviews with Vermetids).

For the vermetids, some people report success with emerald crabs, bumblebee snails, coral snow (there's a DIY recipe on here somewhere for this that's super cheap - I believe it's made from chalk), etc.

Probably the best results I’ve seen with small numbers of vermetids come from crushing the tube and setting a predator (like an emerald crab or a bumblebee snail) by the crushed tube immediately after.

The following may be helpful too:

Can’t tell for sure from the pics, but looks like either vermetid snails or spionid worms. Some people swear by bumblebee snails for vermetids, others say they’re useless, and still more say they’re effective but only over long periods of time (like 8+ months long). It may depend of the species of vermetid you have.

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

 

[Arthacker87]

If they spew out a stringy mucus then yes vermitted snails. Plop rock out and scrape off as much as you can as low as you can. They suck if they are dead same thing. Just bust off ad much as you can

 

[dedragon]

i think vermetid snails as well and these look like the small invasive ones. Not really sure how to get rid of them once they are already at the population size in your tank. Dealt with my little invasion by fully redoing my tank and nuking the rocks with bleach and muriatic acid. Bumblebee snails might help a bit but you would probably need too many to make a real dent in the vermetid numbers