Extremely tiny black dots on rock.

[smlacy]

Hey, I've had my 29g tank set up for about 8 months now, everything's doing mostly great.

I just noticed (yesterday) a cluster of extremely small black dots on my rock, several of which were crawling around. I'd say they were in the range of .2-.4 mm in size, much smaller than a grain of sand, and much smaller than anything I can photograph.

There is a small, sparse cluster of them on the surface of the rock, many of which are not moving, some of which are.

I also saw on some of the crawling ones what I took to be an "eye" as it reflected back a flashlight similar to the way a shrimp's eye reflects back.

Things I know they're not:

- Fish eggs. I have only 1 clown, and 1 purple firefish, 1 peppermint shrimp. Thats it.
- Amphipods / Copepods (unless this is what their "spawn" looks like)
- Snail egg, etc. (much too small, and definately "crawling" like some sort of shrimp-related life form)

What they could be:

- Some sort of parasite?
- Mysis shrimp spawn? (I have quite a few mysis living in my tank)
- Something tubeworm related (lots of small red ones live in my tank)

Any other thoughts? I can attempt to photograph them, but I don't think itl'll do much good.

Steve

 

[Anonymous]

Without a pic they could be myriad of things. Just a guess at the moment would copepods or juvenile mysid shrimp.

Regards,
David Mohr

 

[Twin_II]

Smlacy do they look like this? I don't have an ID but they have been in my tank for years with no ill effect (that I know of anyway ). The pic was enlarged with photoshop.