# insects in my reef tank?



## Feederfish111 (Apr 5, 2005)

about a month ago i set up a 20 gallon acrylic reef tank. The cycling went well, but i began having problems with my powerhead driving my protien skimmer. I was very busy with school and work so i decided to put the poject on hold and i shut the tank down (no power) for about 2 weeks. Sunlight began to grow algea on my live rock and sides of my tank. Last night, i 'got the bug' `to get my tank back on the right track. I flicked on the power switch and wiped down the walls of the tank. This is when my amazment began.....

I noticed that coral blooms had developed on my live rock! small, but definite coral had developed in a room temp tank with no curent or filtration. In examining my new invertabrate friends, i notcied little critters milling around on my rock, then i noticed them on my substrate, then i realized there were hundreds of them all over the tank. In addition to the critters that crawl, i have evtreemly small (under 1mm) white worms adhering to my glass. Larvea of some insect i suspect, but what insect breds in saltwater? Help me out..... :shock:


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## Fishfirst (Jan 24, 2005)

the little critters your are probably seeing are pods, and I doubt you have corals growing in your tank, what do they look like? More than likely its an algae of some sort.


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

Not insect larvae. Just worms.

The other critters are amphipods and isopods.

Live rock frequently gets a lot livelier when put into a tank, especially when it was collected in the winter/early spring and then allowed to warm up in the tank. The sunlight also helped. There's no telling just WHAT was laying dormant on the rock.


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## wrasser (Apr 5, 2005)

if they look white, and are real small they could be copepods, like oldsalt said alot lies dormant on and in the live rock.


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