copepods?

Hello again everyone. Well as most of you may have read I installed a 4bulb tek5 setup yesterday. Much to my amazement when I came home from lunch today, to study the life in my tank as I always do, I saw a swarm of tiny white little crawlers on my glass. Well being new to saltwater my first reaction was "#%$@ there's some kind of infestation in my tank, what next!! I tried to do some research on the net but I must be using a bad search query. The only thing that I can come up with is that they are copepods? Is this right?

Thanks !

PS: ive never seen them in my tank yet i guess the lights are just now bright enough for them to really stand out.

 

I would say the same. Copepods are usually the small critters that are desirable to have as they are part of the food chain.

Jim

 

Well, you wanna have them for a couple of reasons... if you have a mandarin or any other fish that relies on those little crustaceans, they will have something to eat. They also eat off of micro-algae including diatoms, etc, etc.

It's a good thing.

 

Many life forms in our tanks rely on them for food. Corals and inverts especially. Most of the time we grow and raise them in a refugium and they will trickle out from time to time into our main tanks as beneficial food stuff.