Tiny whittish creature

[nleong]

Hi,

Just saw some very very tiny whittish creature at the back of the tank wall. At first thought just hair algae, but at a closer look, they are moving!!!

Are those harmful ?

I only have LR, 2 astrea snails, a cleaner skunk and a star poly in my 2footer.

my tank just went thru a nitrite re-spike after adding 2 kg of additional LR recently. Last check, nitrite came down to almost yellow color with JBL test kit.

Any ideas what those white thiny creatures are ?

[KingFish]

Probably pods, if you look closely, you'd see different shapes and sizes

They're relatively harmless as most of them serve as food, with exceptions of the parasitic ones.

[nleong]

erm... how did they appear huh ?

how do i know if they are parasitic or not ?

[piero]

Nudibranches....I guess... They are going to multiply really fast if they are and will soon infest yr whole tank.

[Fishfreak]

Probably pods. Should be alright. I'm trying to get them to multiply in my tank so that I can keep a mandarin.

[piero]

Mandarin only eat pods???

[BarraCudaTM]

they may eat brineshrimps or other small size food if trained

[Fishfreak]

The training may be tough, and if that fails - another poor mandarin dead because of mankind. So live food is the most ideal and failsafe. This is what I'm doing, picked up from another website on 'cultivating' pods:

Use small pieces of LR to form a pyramid that is somewhat hollow inside. Periodically, put small pieces of shrimp meat inside. This serves as food and the pyramid keeps fish away and 'protects' the pods. Keep doing it until you can see you have a good size colony. I was told it may take at least 6 months to get enough to sustain one mandarin. Moreover, each mandarin should have at least 2 square feet of real estate to itself, and there is one of this 'pod cultivator' for each mandarin.

[BarraCudaTM]

I think you may be feeding the bristle worms instead

I'm not really sure what they eat but I always see the whole lot of them on micro algae or among the macro algaes

[Fishfreak]

BarraCuda™ Posted on Mar 7 2003, 11:56 PM

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I think you may be feeding the bristle worms instead 

True - I really don't know. Maybe I should dig out that site and ask the question.

Those I see in my nano are evrywhere, but mainly on the glass and on the rocks.

[nleong]

nudibranch or pods ? erm... shld i clean them off ?

cos this morning, i saw my skunk trying to catch something in mid-air, i think its feeding, but i couldn't see any food floating around. then it start skimming the water surface (underwater of cos).....

got picture to see what pod and nudibranch looks like huh ?

[Explorer]

Should be pods. They are harmless and serve as food. Got them in My tank too...

[hongqixian]

Hi,

Just saw some very very tiny whittish creature at the back of the tank wall. At first thought just hair algae, but at a closer look, they are moving!!!

Are those harmful ?

I only have LR, 2 astrea snails, a cleaner skunk and a star poly in my 2footer.

my tank just went thru a nitrite re-spike after adding 2 kg of additional LR recently. Last check, nitrite came down to almost yellow color with JBL test kit.

Any ideas what those white thiny creatures are ?

Most pods are harmless and very common. Unlikely to be nudibranchs.

http://www.rshimek.com/odd_critters.htm#Coral%20Fleas

Mandarin fishes only eat copepods and maybe younbg amphipods but they usually don't eat fully grown amphipods. Too big.

In a small tank, say maybe under 55 or 100 gallons, copepods can be wiped out in a short time by a hungry mandarin and other predators like fairy wrasses.

[nleong]

ok thanks everyone. Relief now