Chaeto Critters?
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KingTideCorals
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Copepods/amphipods ! Great stuff to have in a tank.
Micro fauna is key to establishing a thriving reef ecosystem
Micro fauna is key to establishing a thriving reef ecosystem
Yay!
Glad to see they are reproducing... This is my first time having them.I know they say you need to have an established tank to have coral - if I only started a few months ago, would it be ok to start establishing them with these now appearing?
Also, will inhabitants eat these guys up?
Is there such thing as having too many Copepods/overtaking the tank?
KingTideCorals
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So... to answer your questions....
1. Your parameters are a good indication of if you are ready, another way is to get a cheap 5-10 dollar frag of corals (zoas/palys) and see how they do in the system
2. Inhabitants will annihilate the population of pods and its good if they have time to form a big colony before adding predators. All my fish other than my chalk basslet will eat pods if presented the opportunity. My dragonface pipefish lives off em.. and thats a whole other story.
3. There CAN be too many pods but really its never an issue with people. I had an issue recently in my mangrove system where the pods were irritating my zoa colonies so, I added a predator, a dragonface pipefish to help with the control of them.
Do not think because you have pods you should get a pipefish, mandarin, etc. these fish require substantial amounts of pods and need the populations replenished often to keep the population thriving.
Hope this helps, if you would, come check out my youtube channel. May help out!
1. Your parameters are a good indication of if you are ready, another way is to get a cheap 5-10 dollar frag of corals (zoas/palys) and see how they do in the system
2. Inhabitants will annihilate the population of pods and its good if they have time to form a big colony before adding predators. All my fish other than my chalk basslet will eat pods if presented the opportunity. My dragonface pipefish lives off em.. and thats a whole other story.
3. There CAN be too many pods but really its never an issue with people. I had an issue recently in my mangrove system where the pods were irritating my zoa colonies so, I added a predator, a dragonface pipefish to help with the control of them.
Do not think because you have pods you should get a pipefish, mandarin, etc. these fish require substantial amounts of pods and need the populations replenished often to keep the population thriving.
Hope this helps, if you would, come check out my youtube channel. May help out!
KingTideCorals
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Knew there was a better name for em. Just wanted to send him down the somewhat right rabbit hole LOL
When you say "colony", are the white circles (on the glass) colonies?
The chaeto/Copepods are located in an area of the tank where fish are not able to get to.
I will check it out, thank you.
KingTideCorals
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I was talking in terms of my coral "colonies" coral that has grown out from small pieces to create a larger overall colony of the coral.
Taborct1
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Agree to them just being pods. you should be good to get corals. I have quite a few corals now (xenia, zoas, 2 leathers, 3 favias, duncan, lobo, Euphyllia) had them in since right after cycle and they are all doing great with weekly 10% water changes with IO reef Crystal's @ 1.024 salinity. I've only had one zoa frag melt away out of the 7 I have and the others are thriving. That frag never looked good from the beginning so who knows.
Taborct1
Community Member
They slowly stopped opening one by one and went from a grey to white color before disappearing completely. Once they die/melt (start turning white) things in the tank are likely to eat them from my understanding but wont touch healthy ones.
Actually, amphipods will. Lost 4 or 5 zoa plugs that way. One polyp will suffer or die, they start eating it, and i don't know if they are just confused or greedy jerks, but theyll gnaw on the surrounding healthy polyps as well and that goes on like a chain reaction through a whole colony.
Actually stopped that form happening just this week, i pulled the plug and floated it in a cage. Amphipods don't like swimming up. One half melted polyp came back to normal within two days, now the whole plug is healthy again, only lost the inital polyp.
Taborct1
Community Member
I've read that before but there are many other conflicting articles. Seems it depends on the type of pods. I'm still thinking it's the zoas since these were added few weeks ago but I've had the pods since the first zoas frags right after cycle. If I start seeing others have issues I'll post about it but I'm not very concerned since it is just that on and don't want to be hijacking this thread. (Could be the individual that fragged them to as there was superglue running up the side of the colony)
I am not talking about articles, i am talking about seeing amphipods biting chunks out of healthy looking fully open polyps that were showing signs of melting 2 hours later with my own eyes.
But yeah you are right, not the right thread for that.
But yeah you are right, not the right thread for that.
Taborct1
Community Member
Anyways, back to your post. It all depends on tank size and the size of what died. Something small like 3 polyps of rasta zoas are not going to cause a dramatic effect in a 40 gallon like mine. Now maybe in a nano 10 gallon reef it may but it depends on your biological filtration. There are also palytoxins with some zoanthid and palythoa that you have to worry about but if you run activated carbon you shouldn't notice issues with it in the tank.
