Little white bugs....good?

[Mangrove]

I have teeny tiny little bugs on side glass of my 55gal tank. Its going on 4 weeks old and I had the diatom bloowm in week #2. These guys are the size of a pinhead. What am I looking at and are they good?

[Doug1]

Do you have a magnifying glass? If they look like micro shrimp the are prolly copepds and are a good thing, vital link in your reefs food web
If you dont have a magnifier you might want to invest in a nice one, looking at new stuff is really kewl, esp in young tanks , you get to watch things appear

[triggereel]

Ahhhhhhhh bugs? get them out?
No No iam just kidding you dont have bugs
your in week 2 and have diatoms and seeing little critters
well your coming along just fine

If you really have bugs in your system i suggest you should add water

[Shack]

The bugs are good! Wait till you see your first bristle worm!

[Stang69]

I agree but only a reefer would get excited about bugs in his reef hehehhe


Jeff

[Mangrove]

Originally posted by Shack
The bugs are good! Wait till you see your first bristle worm!

I've had a sw LR tank before but its been 2yrs.

I had tons of brs back then. I didn't have much rock back then. When I tore down the 55gal last time I crammed all the rock in a 10gal. That 10gal ran like a dream but had a horrible green hair algae problem.

[Mushroom Boy]

I agree. Bugs good .

My guess is that they're copepods. Do they look like this?

[Mushroom Boy]

May also be amphipods, or any of a number of other kinds of critters...

[Mangrove]

Got my test kit in the mail finally.results:

Ammonia- .25 (lowest it reads)
Nitrate - 10-15ppm
Nitrite - .1ppm
PH - 8-8.2

That good??

[Sylock]

Ammonia and Nitrite should be at zero before you add anything. Your tank is still cycling. I'd be doing water tests everyday until they get to zero. If Ammonia gets up to .5+ then I would do water changes so you don't lose much, if any, life that came on your rock.

[Mangrove]

Originally posted by Sylock
Ammonia and Nitrite should be at zero before you add anything. Your tank is still cycling. I'd be doing water tests everyday until they get to zero. If Ammonia gets up to .5+ then I would do water changes so you don't lose much, if any, life that came on your rock.

What I listed on those tests was that that was the lowest my kit had. Colors on the results were actually lower than that. Only test that actually showed any color at all was the PH test... now THAT would have been bad if it didn't!

All my critters seem happy. I have a damsel, a percula clown, 15+ assorted snails, 15+ assorted hermits (zebra, blueleg mostly). Gotta get a peppermint shrimp, saw 3 atispa in the tank. Biggest is about 1/2"

Also got some small (pinhead) 4 tentacled hydra looking things attached to the glass along with the pods. They have a name? They are kinda white....