what are those white swimming organisms??

[dizay]

hi, can someone tell me what are those white organisms that can be seen swimming, sticking on the tank walls? they are many in numbers and are very small. mainly, they stick to the glass walls and can swim.

 

[twoobem]

Welcome to the board.....
Please describe your tank and it's contents and please give as much information as you can about the white things. It is helpful to know the shape and habbits.
(a lot of white things in tanks)

 

[mr.marine]

i had things like this when i started up my tank. do you have a little clam in ur aquarium?????? i think thats were mine came from. i think i know what ur talkin bout! do they have like little black eyes. if so i had the same and they just dissapeared after a week. you could scrape em off if you want. hope it helps!
flame

 

[aquarius]

I had the same thing happen to my 70 gal. f/o. The tank was vacant for quite some time but was always kept running to cycle the water. Then after turning down the pumps, I could see these little buggers crawling on the glass and swimming through the water. Some people said that they could be copepods and the guy at the lfs said that it was plankton. Either way, these little guys devoured most of the algae in my tank. Also I've heard that it's nothing to worry about because if anything the fish will make a meal out of them. So don't worry and let me know if you observe anything else.

 

[blutang]

Could they possibly be flat worms?

 

[dizay]

hi,somehow 'aquarius' posting seems more of what i am facing with. these white organisms looks harmless. i have this magnetic glass cleaner near the top and whenever i let this magnet float, u can see hundreds of these white things dispersing in the water. some are actually sticking and moving on the glass itself. so far, i cannot see my wrasses, clowns and trigger feeding on them , thus i don't think they are tasty enuff. i don't have those giant clams but i did have some hermit crabs and small clams that died long long ago.

 

[aquarius]

Yes we found thousands of these organisms crawling/swimming throughout the aquarium and they almost completely wiped out the entire algae bed in the tank. It was amazing how fast the algae was eaten away by what we thought to be these little organisms. At the time there was a Tomato Clown and a Percula Clown in the tank but they were sick before we found the little buggers. We don't know how they were introduced into the tank because we have crushed coral as a substrate and dead coral for decoration. The tank was then emptied and rinsed out for other reasons and some of the crushed coral was removed. It has been little more than a month and so far they havn't come back. What I thought to be kinda funny was that when we took a sample of them to the lfs to ask for identification, the owner actually wanted to buy what he thought to be plankton from us! So they shouldn't pose a threat to your fish and if your still really concerned, strip down the tank as a last resort, but I wouldn't worry. Good Luck!

 

[noogiefish]

ME TOO!! i had those things in a min-reef tank i had set-up about two yesrs ago. I attributed that to my two shrimp that were in the tank, i thought they might have had a little 'fun' in the live rock and produced a family. I had a good deal of live rock in the tank though, as well as coral, so i really never convincingly determined where they came from.

 

[beecher]

i have those little buggers in my tank also, I have no LR so I dont know where they came from either. They are pretty much devouring the algae in the tank. I think they are Copepods but am not sure. Are there any sharks in here that can help us identify these things?