What is that.. every little thing in my tank! Translucent white spots on glass.

[swiss1939]

I've been starting to see these translucent white spots and streaks on my glass for the past few weeks and just assumed it was algae or something forming. It is clearly not the standard copepods i have in my tank as i can see the copepods as smaller white spots that are obviously insect shaped. These other spots I'm wondering about look more flat and are slightly larger. Up until now i would just scrape them off the glass as part of my algae scraping, but now I'm holding off cleaning glass to see how they grow.

I only recently started wondering if they are some hitchhiker flat worm or something recently as i see a longer one that created an interesting shape today and went back to it minutes later and it had moved changed shape. They don't move fast enough for me to see by sitting and watching, but they move enough over a few minutes that if i take note of larger ones shapes and come back to it minutes later, i can definitely tell they are moving.

It's really hard to photograph them because they are small, only a little bigger than the copepods also on the glass, and they are translucent. But in person they are very easy to see.

This long white squiggly line in the middle, above, is the one i first noticed was slowly moving as it was originally a c shape and now it's more straight.

Here are more. They are the larger white spots, not the smaller copepods.

 

[Reefer1978]

In the first picture, the wavy almost like stain spots on the glass are patterns from snails eating glass algae/film. Darker white line could be snail eggs. In the second picture, the single spots looks like small sponges. If they move around - those are small white worms / bugs that usually show up in new tanks and a sign of overfeeding.

 

[swiss1939]

Much appreciated! Yes i understand the patterned marks in the algae are tracks from snails. The squiggly line is the same thing as the spots in the second photo and is what is moving slowly, so i don't think it is snail eggs. Must be those worms you mention. I'm only over feeding in the past few days since adding fish because my phosphates were near zero for a month before adding fish and i started to see dinos. Those spots were visible before over feeding, but are definitely taking off now after over feeding.

Hopefully they are not bad worms! I'll eventually get them under control as i am figuring out my feeding system along with nutrient export system to hit my target nutrients.

 

[Reefer1978]

Is the tank new?

 

[swiss1939]

Just over two months old. So yes. Tank cycled and ready after 2 weeks with bottled bac. Mostly dry rock but with a couple small additions of live rock from LFS and an emerald crab from LFS on week 2. Corraline algae taking off since week 4. Worms/amphipods/copepods/snails from IPSF in week 3 along with a freebie leather toadstool that I was not expecting. Everything has been happy and growing well including the leather which has almost doubled in the month and a half since addition. Two clowns only just went in 4 days ago. I had been only feeding phyto every day for copepods and very lightly some crab pellets and algae wafer pieces for the crab every few days up until the fish went in this week. Now I'm feeding small pellets with ground up nori once a day and some frozen brine with phyto once a day for the clowns, but the frozen feeding is too much as I haven't been able to work out small enough mixtures for these juvenile clowns.. so most of the frozen ends up swimming around the tank to get taken up by filtration/cuc.

 

[swiss1939]

I also intentionally induced algae prior to fish in order to keep snails and crab happy, by using 15k lights on reefled 90. Now that I am seeing the smallest amount of dinos and hair algae I've gone to full blues.

 

[swiss1939]

I forgot to mention the small LR I intentionally picked from LFS because it had pineapple sponge and flat red sponge on it.. so maybe what I am seeing is the pineapple sponge spores growing? It seems to be concentrated on the glass nearest that LR with pineapple sponge on it, and less so the further away from that rock you get. So I'm guessing you are right it is sponge.

 

[Reefer1978]

I don't think it's anything to worry about yet.

 

[Reefing_addiction]

Do they move maybe pods?

 

[swiss1939]

Do they move maybe pods?

Definitely not pods. I can see the pods and they are two different things unless they are another type of pod that moves so incredibly slow