Tiny white curly things??

Sregnar35

Sregnar35

The Man, The Myth, The Legend
Aug 21, 2003
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I've noticed a bunch of tiny white curly Q's on my LR and glass. They are extremely small and I couldn't get a quality picture. They look like this "@" actually, only all white. I noticed them on my LR a while back, but I thought they were the start of stony tubed featherdusters (just a guess I had??) which I already have a number of. But now there are a bunch, all different sizes on my glass and they are not stony tubes from what I see. Are the some type of pod?
 
Noticed one on a pic I've already posted, its in the top left corner of the pic.

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They sound like the Hard tube Worms (just like the Red Coco Worms if you have seen those with the huge white tubes and a brilliant red feather worm that comes out of one end (like a feather duster only hard tube). They are good to have and with a blade can be scratched off glass but this will probably destroy them. In my 209 Reef Ready Tank in both overflows there are tons of these along with copepods, amphipods, etc (since they can't live in the main tank they set up camp in the overflows). Anyway, nothing to be worried about, just means your tank is getting very established. Hope this helps.
 
I've got a lot of these little guys growing on the flower pots that I use as an artificial reef base (although the flower pots are soon to go). As they get/got bigger, I was able to observe the little creature that made them. I think they are some kind of volunteer stony-tubed feather duster. The ones that live in my aquarium have very bright red feeding appendages, but I couldn't see them until the curly-Qs got bigger.

This response is purely anecdotal, not based on any research except my own experience.
 
I do have one bigger red feather duster, so that's probably what I'm looking at. I'm conserned about establishing a healthy pod population so I can eventually get a madarinfish. I haven't seen any small white bugs in my tsank anywhere? When I bought my LR, I got a small amount(less than a cup) of LS from the person's established nano reef. She had pods, but I haven't seen any. I have seen a bunch of reddish worms pressed up against the glass in my tank near where I dumped the LS. When should I start seeing pods( the sand was added about a month and a half ago), or what's a good trick for spotting them?
 
Originally posted by Sregnar35
[...]what's a good trick for spotting them?
Click to expand...

If pods is what I'm seeing... :confused:

Leave a section of your front glass unscrubbed for long enough to get some good algae growth. When I do this, the algae becomes swarmed with little pin-point to pin-head sized white dots that move around and act like they can sense each other.

If the unscrubbed section is near the substrate, they show up sooner.
 
UPDATE

Well my brain finally caught up to my eyes!! I just remembered I saw a blob of what looked like cob web, only slimy, above the red coco worm on my live rock. That was last week and it's gone now. Well I'd bet that was the coco worm reproducing, because ever since that slime has been gone, there has been curly q's everywhere. Also, I took DEmigh's advice, and looked at the algae on my glass for pods. OH MY GOD, you can't go more than an inch, on any part of my glass, and not see a least one critter. I've probably seen them all along, they are just so small. But now I see them buzzing around all over!! I'm so excited!!!
 
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Originally posted by Sregnar35
[...] you can't go more than an inch, on any part of my glass, and not see a least one critter.[...]
Click to expand...

I don't want you to suffer from 'pod envy ;) (especially since I don't actually know these are 'pods), but... each square inch of unscrubbed glass in my tank has dozens of the little beasts :p (whatever the heck they are...)

I feed DT's phytoplankton to my sponge colonies, and I imagine the 'pods(?) benefit from that as well.

I have understood that mandarinfishes are micro-predators, so maybe you will need to feed the creatures that the mandarin will be eating before you get the mandarin.
 
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