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View Full Version : Tiny White "lice looking" bug things inside Tank.


SaltLifeLove
11/01/2009, 05:03 PM
So my 75 is on week 3 of cycling and today while I was cleaning stuff out by sump I looked up and saw very small white bugs crawling and moving around inside on the glass. They remind me of lice and fleas the way they are acting and under the T5s look white to me. I dont think they are flatworms because after reading this article http://www.melevsreef.com/flatworms.html it just doesnt seem like them...Any other ideas RC? I know a picture would help but they are insanely small.
My 20L has small snail eggs and even little feather dusters..but nothing like this.
I have the heebie jeebies...and now feel itchy :hmm5:
Oh and there seems to be hundreds of them maybe even thousands...

clayw
11/01/2009, 05:06 PM
copepods...a good thing in a reef tank

redsea reefer
11/01/2009, 05:20 PM
Copepods and/or Amphipods, Good guys and live food for your fish...

SaltLifeLove
11/01/2009, 05:28 PM
Amphipods seem more like it...even Wikipedia used the term sand fleas and that is exactly what they remind me of. Well I hope thats it. Thanks!
Any other ideas are welcome... :)

stingythingy45
11/01/2009, 06:21 PM
Amphipods are rather large.
They resemble small shrimp,and even molt like shrimp.
I often see them at night with a flash light.

SaltLifeLove
11/01/2009, 06:59 PM
Hmm, well these are not large...very very small actually. Smaller than a house flea...

Crustman
11/01/2009, 07:18 PM
Could be isopods. My reef is loaded with them. The only way to really know is get them under a microscope. Amphipods have 3 pairs of uropods while isopods only have one. These are the appendages attached to the abdomen.

SaltLifeLove
11/01/2009, 07:44 PM
Wow, looking all this stuff up makes me feel creepy crawly. Well I hope that whatever it is, it is good. Thanks everyone so far. I just don't want to start adding fish without knowing they are harmless. SO far it seems I have nothing to worry about.

customdusty
11/01/2009, 10:14 PM
You are doing good. I spent $100 from livecopepods.com trying to seed my tank with these, and you get them for free.

SaltLifeLove
11/01/2009, 10:26 PM
Wow, well you can come take some of mine...they freak me out! lol I wanted a Mandarin...and decided against it because I didn't want to deal with pods and a fuge...go figure:hmm6:

DC_40gallon
11/01/2009, 10:26 PM
Agreed on the 'pods. they will take over your live rock (which you want) and live in the tiny holes in your rock. Try in the middle of the night taking a flashlight to your tank and seeing what is going on, you'll probably freak out. Most don't realize ours tanks are more active usually at night with no lights on than during the day with lights on.

btw, when you see a lack of 'pods in your tank you can always buy more live 'pods. They are cheap $10-15 for 4-5,000 (yeah THOUSAND) of them and they will be alive and well swimming in a bottle of RO/DI water ready to just dump right in.

DC_40gallon
11/01/2009, 10:27 PM
sorry just read the above, you spent $100 on pods!?

discus510
11/01/2009, 11:06 PM
pods 10-15 bucks for 4-5000?? where do u get them from cheapest ive seen is 10 for 1000

customdusty
11/02/2009, 07:03 AM
I spent $100 from livecopepods.com, and they didn't last real long. I won't do it again. I run a bacteria driven ULNS, so I just don't have the nutrients available to maintain a large population, although I have a few. Likewise, I have almost no clean up crew, no bristle worms, pests, blah, blah, blah - Because there is nothing for them to eat.

SaltLifeLove
11/02/2009, 07:52 AM
I guess my next question would be is if this is normal for a new and cycling tank??

Poeticlydead
11/02/2009, 08:47 AM
Only 3 weeks in and you have a large pod popultion.
That is great I'll assume you bought some really good live rock for the tank and that is most likely where they came from.

SaltLifeLove
11/02/2009, 08:57 AM
Yeah I did get some pretty awesome Fiji LR from my LFS about 75 lbs was fully cured and the other 20 lbs were almost cured.

jason2459
11/02/2009, 09:00 AM
Hopefully you got a bunch of good pods and most likely you do. :thumbsup:


There are a lot of types of pods. Some eat detritus and cyano which are perfect. Some are herbivore and will munch on algae. Then there are some bad types that are parasitic. They can range in size from microscopic all the way up to large evil looking things that will rip out a fishes tung and replace it with themselves. (Talk about creepy.)

You will need to look really closely at them or get a magnify glass and you can get their general shape and look. Then check out places like this.

http://www.chucksaddiction.com/hitchpods.html

Hopefully they are not Cirolanid. Those are the real bad ones that do show up from time to time in peoples tanks. I have some variants of the Harpacticoid family copepod, munnid isopods, and amphipods in my tank. Fun to look out for and watch your fish hunting them down. Fish love them. My clowns like the amphipods, my flame angel and cardinals likes the isopods, and my yellow watchman and blenny likes the copepods.

DC_40gallon
11/02/2009, 09:02 AM
discus510 - my LFS sells them prebottled for that from a distributor (sorry can't think of the name of the major company who bottled them). I paid $12 for 4,000-5,000 and it was definitely a few thousand guys swimming around. When I put them in the tank it was a hue of fog it was that many.

Now every single piece of my LR has a pod living in it. It's made my tank look like a miniature Manhattan from all the pods living in my live rock.

jason2459
11/02/2009, 09:02 AM
I guess my next question would be is if this is normal for a new and cycling tank??

Perfectly normal. I think I was about 4 weeks into my tank getting setup and started to see the Isopods first.

SaltLifeLove
11/02/2009, 09:06 AM
Wow, I have a really weak stomach...Thank you for the website Jason...I will have to buy a magnifying glass. My "bugs" are really really small and appear to ONLY be on the glass, I dont see any jumping action on the rocks, but they are so small I dont even know if I could see them from that far away.

jason2459
11/02/2009, 09:12 AM
Wow, I have a really weak stomach...Thank you for the website Jason...I will have to buy a magnifying glass. My "bugs" are really really small and appear to ONLY be on the glass, I dont see any jumping action on the rocks, but they are so small I dont even know if I could see them from that far away.

:lol: Sorry for the description then.

Most likely copepods. The isopods you can look really close and see their definite shape. Yeah, you will probably never see them on the live rock unless it's right up against the glass. You may see the bigger types of isopods and definitely amphipods swimming around particularly at night with a red light, like a red LED works great. To really see the amount of them in the tank you can turn off all powerheads and returns (anything that creates flow in the tank) then turn on a light that shines into the tank. They will be frantically trying to swim to hide but there is no flow to help speed them on their way.

Trendy2
11/02/2009, 09:14 AM
I think it's normal that they're there and a good thing. I'm sure they are all over your rocks as well as the glass. As soon as I acclimated my first fish, a green chromis, he gobbled them all up off of the glass, I don't see them much at all anymore but yeah, I must have had thousands too when my tank was cycling - I liked watching them hop around the rocks, they're cute.:D

SaltLifeLove
11/02/2009, 09:15 AM
OK, well if for some reason they turn our to be parasitic, or if in the future I have a problem what do I do to rid of them??

SaltLifeLove
11/02/2009, 09:17 AM
I think it's normal that they're there and a good thing. I'm sure they are all over your rocks as well as the glass. As soon as I acclimated my first fish, a green chromis, he gobbled them all up off of the glass, I don't see them much at all anymore but yeah, I must have had thousands too when my tank was cycling - I liked watching them hop around the rocks, they're cute.:D

Cute...is not the word I would use. :lolspin:

jason2459
11/02/2009, 11:21 AM
OK, well if for some reason they turn our to be parasitic, or if in the future I have a problem what do I do to rid of them??

I highly doubt they are bad. Cirolanid isopods are very distiguishable and would really only be seen at night and most likely seen on your fish and not your glass. IF you ever do get them check out this link.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-02/bp/index.php

SaltLifeLove
11/02/2009, 01:03 PM
I am a little slow...I just realized I have been following your rebuild and recovery thread....Nice job btw :) Oh and my son loves the video of the Tiger Pistol and the Watchmen. We have a watchmen in our 20L and now he wants a pistol shrimp!

jason2459
11/02/2009, 01:06 PM
I am a little slow...I just realized I have been following your rebuild and recovery thread....Nice job btw :)



Thanks, I didn't know anyone was reading it besides a few old guys. :wave:

Been really happy with everything so far besides the sick angel where a QT would have been good to have started with.

Also, that's great that he liked the video. If you can get the pistol shrimp and watchman to pair up it is fun to watch. Otherwise I think I'd be a bit bored of the watchman just sitting under a rock all day doing nothing which he did until he found his buddy.

SaltLifeLove
11/02/2009, 01:11 PM
Yeah my watchmen is really boring but really freakin cute! That sucks about your Angel, I took a risk with my flame angel and added him to my 20L only after 4 weeks! He still seems to be doing great, but I think he will be much happier to be in the 75.

jason2459
11/02/2009, 01:16 PM
Oh yeah, that flame angel will love the 75 especially if you have lots of live rock setup for him to swim in and out of and hunt for stuff on. One thing is that mine has never lost an appetite and is always hunting for food on the live rock.

Sounds like you're off to a great start. Good luck!

SaltLifeLove
11/02/2009, 01:19 PM
We are somewhere around 90-95 lbs of Live rock. He just recently started acting a little aggressive towards my firefish but other than that he is always looking for food. He has pretty much claimed the one half of my 20 gallon and other than my perc sleeping up top on that side no one really goes over there....lol

Thanks for the well wishes :)

jason2459
11/02/2009, 01:24 PM
Sounds like a great setup. Would love to see pictures! Should make another thread or just post them in my little journal thread would be fine too. Cap'n and Paul B (the two old guys) check it out from time to time and give some great tips in there as well.

SaltLifeLove
11/02/2009, 01:28 PM
I actually just added the first fish to the 75 today, we had our water tested and everything was good except our pH was a little low. We added a school of 5 chromis to kind of test out the tank. I hope they make it! I will post pics soon, the water is cloudy from some buffer and builder.

Jaycen B.
11/02/2009, 04:47 PM
Six Line Wrasse will take good care of the creepy crawly.

They are tougher than boild owl poo.

SaltLifeLove
11/02/2009, 05:27 PM
The fact that you edited that post to include boiled owl poo really concerns me. Otherwise Thanks!

Jaycen B.
11/02/2009, 05:38 PM
That is not why i edited it it was my bad spelling. I love my six line. As you can see with boiled.