Little white dots everywhere

[Bradco]

I seem to have a lot of little white dots on the back glass and outside the plastic area of my returms, when I try to clean them they are hard, can anyone tell me what this is and should I be worried.

[dreams]

the are probably worms....beneficial filter feeders

[Travis L. Stevens]

I would suspect them to either be Spirobid Worms, Q-Tip Sponges (AKA Pineapple Sponge), or even the possibility of various differect kinds of "pods" (Amphipods, Copepods, or Isopods)

[crumbletop]

most likely: http://www.melevsreef.com/id/spirorbid_worms.html

Not to worry :)

[WaterKeeper]

I agree that they are most likely

http://images2.fotki.com/v15/photos/2/28482/171438/spiralworm2-vi.jpg
A Spirobid Worm--Photo by DC

Harmless but somewhat of a pain to remove from the glass and plastic. A large outbreak usually declines over time.

[Bradco]

I will check again when I get home, put they do not look curly

[Sk8r]

They'll grow on your snails, your rock, just about everywhere. Harmless. Just part of the micro-systems.

[Bradco]

Actually close look they are curly, so they are safe, but a pain to remove, what benefits if I leave them alone

[WaterKeeper]

Well if you don't mind the dots the only thing they do is use up some calcium but that you can replace. I really don't know of any benefits or drawbacks to leaving them other than that.

[crumbletop]

The only benefits I can think of to leaving them are:

1) Less maintenance work (i.e. if you leave them in the overflow, you won't have to scrape in the overflow).
2) It's possible that their gametes/embyos (if that is how they reproduce) in the watercolumn could be good food for other filter feeders and corals.

Jack