Bug ID please

TonapahNorth · Nov 16, 2013

My tank is 33 days old. I feed 1/2 cube of brine or mysis daily and on alternating days I add 1tbsp of phyto. Recently I've noticed tiny (super tiny) specks that are white in color moving around on my glass.

They hang low on the glass and seem more populated in the lower flow area corner that I have. Some move pretty fast but some don't move much or are very slow.

Not much help with this photo probably. But here goes. They are the small things above the horizon line.

I can scrape them off and turn on my UV or something. Or is this much more serious? Corals are thriving and my single fish (a Midas blenny) is doing great.

Thoughts?
Thanks
Tona

jedimasterben · Nov 16, 2013

Copepods.

TonapahNorth · Nov 16, 2013

Thanks Jedi

I understand that these are pretty good to have in your tank as some fish eat them (mandarins). Are they ok if I don't have one of those fish?

Any way to be sure that these are Copepods and not some other pest?

bct15 · Nov 16, 2013

Sound like copepods, they are good to have. The flatworms in the other thread you were concerned about are called red planaria, what you have doesn't sound like them at all.

jedimasterben · Nov 16, 2013

TonapahNorth said:
Thanks Jedi

I understand that these are pretty good to have in your tank as some fish eat them (mandarins). Are they ok if I don't have one of those fish?

Any way to be sure that these are Copepods and not some other pest?

Copepods are basically the bottom of the food chain - feed them, and you'll feed 100% of the chain. Keep up exactly what you're doing (feeding a good amount AND low-micron foods such as live phyto, also look into stuff like Reef Cleaners Filter food (the best powdered food ever IMHO), Coral Frenzy, and I believe New Life Spectrum has a new 'micro' food, I would look into that (NLS has the only pellet food I will use) as well. Don't feed too much, I would do 1/4 teaspoon once weekly for several months, then do it twice weekly for a while, then 3 times weekly, etc, so that your biological filter can handle the nutrient load. Using that technique, you can basically feed as much as you want without worrying about nutrients rising. That's what the California Academy of Sciences did for their 200g NPS tank, they went from feeding it around 500mL of food (freshly hatched artemia, mysis, capelin eggs, and a bunch of other goodies) to 4 liters (I think they did that over a period of two years) of it without changing any filtration on the tank, and their nutrient levels stayed the same. The key is absolutely to take it slooooowwwwww.