ID This

N

ntl555

Premium Member
Sorry, I have no pictures of these since they are soooo small. My camera in Digital Macro Mode cant even get these. I'll just describe it as best as I can.

I was doing some routine testing and algae scraping off my glass and I noticed this on all sides of the tank.

They are on my glass where the algae is growing. Its a few hundred (I would say) of very very small white critters crawling around the algae. The best I can describe them as is that they are very small white baby copepods but honestly I can not tell with the naked eye. I know its moving cause at first I thought it was just a bunch of sand on the glass, but noticed they were moving around in random patterns. I have never seen these before in other tanks.

Here is a history of my tank. 2-3 months old. 72 gallon bowfront that was cycled with good salt water from another tank. Had about 40-50 lbs of dead rock and have about 20 lbs of live rock on top of all that dead rock. Ph 8.2, Salinity 27, SG 1.022, Calcium 390, Ammonia 0, Nitrate 0, Nitrate 20. I have more parameters written at home, but these were off the top of my head.

Thanks in advance!!
 
Did the pods have legs? Or could they have been white/opaque benign flatworms?
 
I couldnt really tell... they were soooo soooooo small. I will have to see if I can see legs tonight. If they are flatworms, do they move around quickly or do they have sluglike movements??
 
the common flatworm i see is the they move slug-like movement with a split tail and they can be all over the glass and really really small.
 
I would guess this isn't a flatworm then... it randomly moves around quickly.. more flea like I would say. looks like its feeding off the algae. I think I'll have to borrow a camera that can take a really good macro picture.
 
I believe its copepods now. here is a video of them in action. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7YAKFYRSQk
 
Yes, those are copepods, some even carrying egg sacs. :)

http://www.melevsreef.com/id/copepod2.html
 
learn something new everyday... its the first time I've ever seen anything like that. It's quite amazing. It's so many you can actually see them on all sides of my glass.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top