What are these stick things?

[rbarrera]

I'm a novice and my tank is about a year old. I had just changed my lights for brighter ones and things started to explode in the tank. I noticed that I start having this "sticks" growing all over the place - shells, rocks, coral - you name it, it has it. I tried to remove it but they are very hard and it just cracks it will break in pieces. At the base it spirals and then flairs out. Sometimes something stringy comes out and it looks like I have a underwater web going on. These guys are growing exponetially! Does anyone know how to control these things or even know what they are? Here is the picture of them.

 

[Tim Reed]

I'm kind of new myself but I have a worm in my tank that expells a string of webbing and catches floating debris. They are hamless and actuall help clean out the tank. The picture you have looks like fan worms though. They are filter feeders but I have never seen them send out any stringy stuff. What type of lights did you get?

 

[Wormy]

Congratulations rbarrera, you have tube worms

. This is a good thing. It means you're doing things right. A sudden population explosion of these is a good indicator of tank health. I had the exact same thing happen in my tank (and I was really excited). Don't worry about them causing problems...they won't. They'll filter stuff out of the water column, and some may even grow large enough to look neat. You've got a good thing here, not a bad thing.

 

[rbarrera]

The light I got are formosa lights - JBJ Aqua Lighting, 47" 55W with fan. It's suppose to give me twice the amount of lights (4 bulbs, (2) 55 Watt 6500K Daylight, and (2) 55 Watt 7100K Blue Actinic Bulbs) I had before without it completely covering the hood of the tank - same size in length but smaller in height and width. And the best thing about these is that it has fans attached to them so you don't have to worry about the heat produced on the surface of the water and also no ballast to worry about. Of course it is pricey but it might be worth the money in the long run. I'll see as the tank progresses.