what are these?

I have noticed some new "residents" and want to know what they are. I'm hoping they are some type of pod.

They are tiny, white, and there are 100's on the glass. Their shape is a center round dot with 5+ little "fingers" sticking out. They kinda look like an astrick *. They do not seem to move about at all. The "fingers" are blowing around in the flow. I tried to get a pic, but they are just too small. The center dot is about the size of a fine pen head.

My 90 reef DT is about 5 years old, but has been (and still is) fallow of fish for 5 weeks thanks to an ich outbreak. I added a fuge with chaeto about 2 weeks ago.

Any chance this has do do with the ich?

Thanks in advance.

 

they are hitchhikers called hydroid jellyfish. you can magfloat them off the glass and theyll come back in a few hours. there numbers will probibly drop as time goes on. i have them in my tank to have noticed no effects i think they are filter feeders.

 

ill take some! my tank doesnt have any and its been up for 8 months very jealous they sound so neat, they dont harm anything

 

They can reach plague proportions and sting some sensitive corals... but yeah I usually ignore a few. They might go away, they might take over - AFAIK there's no really effective way to battle them without killing everything else in the tank, so let them be for now, and if you start to see enough to block your view of the tank maybe try to scrape and siphon them off during a water change.

I am going through an explosion of digitate hydroids right now, a relative, but worse.

 

thanks for your replies.

do you think my 6line will clean them out when he's added back in a couple weeks?

 

hold on... are they calcareous? if so then they are just very tiny featherdusters... nothing harmful at all

 

I don't think they are calcareous. I'm pretty sure they're not featherdusters. I've been at this long enough to recognize those.

No big explosion of them as of yet. I'm hoping my fish eat them when they're returned to the tank.

 

http://www.3reef.com/forums/id/i-d-...-photos-we-can-use-please-submit-60769-4.html
borrowed pic from packleader in id library
3reef ID library has tons of picks of hitchikers etc..



these are likely the hydroids you are looking at. fairly common with newer tanks. and will normally disappear as the tank matures. but like said before they can reach plague like proportions. so just keep an eye on it and chances are you wont see them any more

 

K+ Yep, that's it. Maybe these are from my new fuge? Thanks for the pic ID!