Help identifying tiny organisms + some other questions

mh0ward · Mar 17, 2024

Hello everyone, I am new to saltwater and fish keeping in general, and I need some help identifying some tiny organisms, possibly some sort of egg(s), and have a couple of other questions!

This afternoon I was blowing off my rock work with a baster and quite a bit of white specs blew out almost like snow. It kindof looks like sand grains but I dont think it is. Any idea what it might be?

Those are about as good of pics as I can get of some of it. There are also places that don't seem to blow off at all. The only thing I can think of is maybe some calcium deposits or something?

The main reason I was blowing them off was to blow loose some red hair algae (I think?) and siphon it out. However, after doing this, my curiosity got the best of me and I put some of the stuff that was syphoned under my digital microscope. What I found were a couple of tiny worm-like organisms and I have no idea if they are good or bad.

Apologies in advance for the poor pic and video quality, but the microscope doesn't record video so I had to record its screen with my phone. In the screen grab above I've pointed out the two little organisms and also what looks like some kind of egg? There were a couple of them in the sample I took.

Here is a link to the video which will make it easier to see the organisms:

Thanks for any help in advance!

Dan_P · Mar 17, 2024

mh0ward said:
Hello everyone, I am new to saltwater and fish keeping in general, and I need some help identifying some tiny organisms, possibly some sort of egg(s), and have a couple of other questions!

This afternoon I was blowing off my rock work with a baster and quite a bit of white specs blew out almost like snow. It kindof looks like sand grains but I dont think it is. Any idea what it might be?

Those are about as good of pics as I can get of some of it. There are also places that don't seem to blow off at all. The only thing I can think of is maybe some calcium deposits or something?

The main reason I was blowing them off was to blow loose some red hair algae (I think?) and siphon it out. However, after doing this, my curiosity got the best of me and I put some of the stuff that was syphoned under my digital microscope. What I found were a couple of tiny worm-like organisms and I have no idea if they are good or bad.

Apologies in advance for the poor pic and video quality, but the microscope doesn't record video so I had to record its screen with my phone. In the screen grab above I've pointed out the two little organisms and also what looks like some kind of egg? There were a couple of them in the sample I took.

Here is a link to the video which will make it easier to see the organisms:

Thanks for any help in advance!

I suspect the bulk of the white dust is sand. No way to tell what those microscopic things are. Worms are generally a good thing to have in an aquarium because they are part of the real clean up crew. The round things could be a photosynthetic organism.