Copepods all over my seaweed clip

So yesterday I was taking my seaweed clip out of the tank to clean and replace it with fresh seaweed(I do it daily) and I really never notice before but the clip was crawling with Copepods, big and small. Now generally I know pods are good, but is it good to have them on the clip? I thought adult pods are suppose to stay in the substrate, but there were some 1/4inch size ones on this clip so, is this good or bad? I dipped the clip in freshwater just to clean it off, and I counted about 25 pods and that was after I shook off probably a 1/2 dozen back into the water.

I have a sailfin blenny, but he doesnt eat the pods and I don't think any of my other fish will eat them, so maybe I should get a goby? I'm not very good with knowing whats a good pod population, but I'm figuring if I saw 25 on a veggie clip then there has to be 1000s in the substrate.

 

pods mean a healthy tank.

 

LOL, should have dipped the clip in your tank and shook them off! There are people out there that pay good money and lots of it for bottle of Pods like the ones you trashed.

As far as I know you really can have to many pods in your system. When my light go off for the night if I wait a little while and look with a flash light the glass on my tank is so covered with them that is blurs the view into the tank.

 

Pod populations depend on available food. You can't have too many. If there's not enough food, they stop reproducing.

 

Until you get one of the few species that are parasitic lol

 

Well true. However, parasitic isopods are going to be on a fish and not on an algae clip.

 

Are they all obligatory parasites? I was under the impression that at least a couple species were non-obligatory.

 

Well that's a possibility. I guess that would be a question better suited for Ron Shimek. I've always operated under the assumption that species A is parasitic whereas species B, C, and D were not.

Interesting question.

 

Interesting, well I checked again today and there was a few of them crawling around on it still and yeah at night there are a decent amount on the glass. Sounds like good news as long as their not parasitic.

Thanks!

 

Good for you with the pods. Way to go.