Two stupid questions

1) Why is coralline algae good, but other kinds bad?
2) Copepods- I've sure got a lot of them. Water changes leave them all over the glass and floating for about an hour or two. They're, uh, good, right?

(I really *have* been reading, I swear!)

 

Firstly, there is no such thing as a stupid question

Coralline algae is good in that it is not detrimental to your tank, the only thing it will do is gobble up some of your calcium, but from my experience that is not really an issue. The other forms of algae that I would say are naturally occuring usually are a nuisanse in one way or another. For example, the worse kind I would say is cyano (technically not an algae though!) and then probably green hair algae.

As for your copepods, they are a good thing and are a good source of food for some fish and corals.

 

Coralline algae is very pretty as well and will compete for some of the nutrients required by nuisance algae.
As Frizza stated, they are both advantageous!

 

Thanks!