little white specks every where

[rgmatzke]

I don't know what it is. The little white specs started on the back wall of my tank and now is everywhere, on the rock and on the crab shells. Please let me know what has happened. thanks

[kreblak]

Got any live rock in the tank? If so, inspect the white dots. If you can determine them to be tiny, coiled, and have little red filiments sticking out the end, then you have a harmless (albeit somewhat annoying) worm that grows on the glass. Mine showed up 3 weeks after adding the live rock, and have gotten quite out of control. A good wall scraping gets rid of them, but be warned, they come back...:rolleyes:

[sharky]

I have the same thing on the front glass of mine , They just appeared on there after I did a water change . Mine look like little white specks with legs all around them bout the size of a pin head, I called the pet store and they told me they were baby star fish , does that sound like what this could be ?

[kreblak]

I called the pet store and they told me they were baby star fish

My LFS told me they were turbo snail larvae. One look with the naked eye proved that wrong. Sometimes I swear they just make things up rather than say they don't know. Some of the answers they have provided me with over the years have been dubious, to say the least. My favorite suggestions they have given me is to soak my live rock in bleach in order to clean it :confused: Then they actually warned me to make sure that I soaked the live rock in dechlorinator afterwards, because I would want to put the rock back into the tank with all that bleach on it! Apparently this person was unaware that bleach would wipe out any sign of life what so ever on the rock. Wow.

[Satchmo]

If the little white guys move and are practically microscopic, then they are likely copepods and are beneficial. If they're larger, coiled, and calcerous -they're probably the afore mentioned tube worms. Neither one will harm anything and are both a good sign of a maturing system. If they're the tube worms, you can scrape them off if they get unsightly.