I've been seeing these small things in my zoas at night but haven't been able to ID them on any of the lists i've found so far. They're extremely tiny, about the size of a copepod or maybe a hair bigger, and look like microscopic hermit crabs. White shell with what looked like tiny gray specks. Hard to manually remove unless you catch them off guard, as they appear to latch on just like a hermit crab does when you try to move one. I managed to siphon one out with a turkey baster last night, only for it to be crushed by the slide cover as I was placing it on a microscope slide. :/ I did get a few photos though, so maybe someone will recognize them and help me with a good/bad ID?
Little info on the zoas: I have two types currently. Some ORA greens and some ORA reds. The reds haven't been too happy lately but the greens are thriving. They stay open almost all the time and are growing fast. This is also where I find all of these little critters moving about. I'd imagine if they were pests or irritators, the zoas would be closed up but i've not seen anything like that with the greens. I'm also not seeing any signs of eggs on the stalks of zoas.
This is the best photo I could get before it was crushed. I used a magnifier app on my phone to get super close but the quality isn't too great.
This is the closest thing I could find on Google as far as similarities go. Even these look big compared to what i'm seeing.
Little info on the zoas: I have two types currently. Some ORA greens and some ORA reds. The reds haven't been too happy lately but the greens are thriving. They stay open almost all the time and are growing fast. This is also where I find all of these little critters moving about. I'd imagine if they were pests or irritators, the zoas would be closed up but i've not seen anything like that with the greens. I'm also not seeing any signs of eggs on the stalks of zoas.
This is the best photo I could get before it was crushed. I used a magnifier app on my phone to get super close but the quality isn't too great.
This is the closest thing I could find on Google as far as similarities go. Even these look big compared to what i'm seeing.