Barnacles and mussels

[Godbert]

are there any problems with having barnacles or mussels in your tank?

[amcarrig]

I wouldn't. Most of them come from water colder than what we keep in our tanks and both of them require heavy planktonic feeding to survive.

[pagojoe]

I agree with Amcarrig. There's no real problem with having them if they are already on your rocks, but it's difficult to keep most filter feeders alive and happy in a reef tank, and most eventually starve to death. Dr. Shimek recently posted some info about feeding in a particular species of gorgonian, and it included as estimation of the amount of available food in the water column. It was many times what would normally be available in an aquarium, and probably explains why so many of the filter feeding organisms don't thrive in our tanks. A quote from that post:

"The amout of food hitting even a small portion of a reef is immense; one can calculate the amount passing through a volume of a 100 gallon tank may be on the order of 1,000,000 food items weighing about 1 pound (500g) in a 12 hour period."

That's going to be hard to duplicate in any reef tank!!

5-ii-08

Cheers,


Don