ayyy.... new hitchhiker :|

[drew_tt]

Today, I noticed along the sides of the tank glass, there seem to be small colonies of these little guys. They are spaced maybe a couple inches apart, and range from 1mm to minute sizes that I can barely tell are there.
They are white in appearance, have a hard shell, and adhere to the glass. Their shell is in a spiral shape and most of their spirals make it around 2 or 3 times.
I sucked one up with a pipette, and I needed to 'scrape' it off... pretty sticky guys.
I put it under the microscope... didnt mind the light. All I saw was a jagged-edged shell [under high power] and the spiral... then a tentacle shot out that seemed relatively skinny. Then it looked like a feather duster emerging, but with an anemone's tentacles. It opened up and I saw part of its 'body'... there were maybe 15-20 tentacles in total, and they were transparent... kinda freaked me out. At first they seemed like snails, but they seem pretty immobile and snails dont have this many tentacles... Then I knocked the microscope and it withdrew back into its spiral shell and it hasnt appeared since.
Ive checked everywhere, and havent found much of anything.... anyone have any ideas, know what Im talking about, or what I should do?
I hope theyre beneficial... far too many to manually remove...
ideas?
thanks,
Drew

 

[drew_tt]

thanks for the compliments
are you sure its a tubeworm? its tentacles seemed pretty 'meaty'... not like the usual feathers...
and the spirals are conjoined into a disk... I didnt mention it, but it's not like a usual tubeworm "spiral"...
hmmmmmmmm is there such a limpet? or maybe it IS a snail... these things are in NO book I know of so Im on my own...
the microscope, I got from a lab that got all new equipment. they wont be needing it back. its semi-old, and I doubt I could hook up a camera to it. I dont have a digital camera, but if you can think of any way I could take 'film-pictures' with a regular camera and a microscope, Id love to try... I really wish I did have a digital cam. oh well
Drew
ps-if they are tubeworms, do you think theyre going to reproduce exponentially and Ill have to scrape them off daily? theyve been popping up all day long, out of the blue, and I havent added anything for weeks... :

 

[royce]

Drew, you can probably find a 35 mm camera to hook up to your microscope, they have been making them for years so the age of the scope is probably not an issue. Try Olympus or Nikon, and you might have to call a laboratory supply company. I've taken some pretty cool pics of cells doing some very interesting things over the years. And BTW, I also have those tube worms, thanks for the detailed description!

 

[drew_tt]

yup thats 'em!
thanks, Sammy
so will these guys get out of control? or should I just let them all be?
Drew