pods on my zoos and toadstool

http://www.clanfuq.com/uploads/435_100_0935.JPG

Hello everyone!

Above is a URL to a pic I just took of these pod-looking bigs that are literally everywhere in my tank. They are crawling all over myzoos and the zoos seem to be deteriorating. I haven't seen polyps out on my mushroom coral in weeks and these things are on that too. Also they hang out on the glass. There's literally hundreds of them.

Anyone have a clue what they are?

Thank you!

 

Hard to tell in the pic, do they look like this?

 

Or more like this?

 

Its very hard to tell from the pics do they look more like pods or little snails?

 

This thread is making me itchy

I have no idea what those buggers are but a better picture would help as well as a description of them and their behavior.

 

well, there's a couple different kinds of them. They are obviously pretty small, I'd say maybe 5mm in length for the bigger ones. They are mostly black on their shell. Some have diamond shapes on their back that are white. Others seem to have a half circle shape on one half of their shell. I think they have 10 legs and 2 tentacles.

They swarm all over the seaweed strips when I put them in the tank. I figured they were algea eaters, but now I'm not so sure.

 

Is the shell segmented?

 

This might help with an i.d. Be sure to check out the links within the article as well:

Pills, Parasites, and Predators; Isopods in the Reef Aquarium by Ronald L. Shimek, Ph.D. - Reefkeeping.com

 

Thanks for the link, it makes me nervous! I haven't seen any of these things on my fish or cleaner shrimp. I can easily trap a bunch of them with seaweed strips. Perhaps I should go buy a magnifying glass and take a pic of some of them.

 

That would be best as it's really hard to i.d. them with the picture you took