teeny tiny mysid shrimp (maybe)

[asylumdown]

My overflow boxes are chalk full of these itty bitty little shrimp like things that swim in really fast zig zaggy like circles. I just found a sizeable colony of them in my skimmer chamber as well and upon closer inspection they look like the tiniest of mysis shrimps.

I have no idea how they come to be in my tank, I break all my corals off their rocks/bases and dip them all in solutions that should kill them, and I haven't added any live-rock for almost a year and a half. They certainly weren't there last December when I was dealing with aiptasia and spent hours looking in my overflows with a flashlight. I don't think I've added anything that something so conspicuous could have hitchhiked in on since.

Is this a good or a bad thing?

[Delphinus]

They may indeed be actual Mysis sp. - ultimately just part of your 'pods population - and yes a good thing - and they'll come in on anything - coral rubble live rock etc.

You are seeing them there because it's harder for fish to eat them all if they can't get at them. Kind of shows how things like pod piles can work well though (small piles of live rock rubble with lots of gaps for the pods to establish "safe havens").

[asylumdown]

well sweet! Now that I'm thinking about it, for the first 8ish months the tank was running I was using herbies, so there were no standpipes in my overflows and nothing built up at the bottom of it because everything just got sucked down in to a filter sock. Now that there's Durso standpipes in there the overflows are starting to act like something of a refugium. That's probably why I didn't notice them last December, there had only been standpipes in there for a month by then.

[eli@fijireefrock.com]

These are some of you best filtration.you have to look closely to see them...I have a soup of them in all my sumps all different types of pods. :thumb:

[lastlight]

I have a few rocks where if I look under them closely for long enough I can spot some. They're lightning fast too!

[Starry]

check 'em at night with a flashlight, their eyes shine!

[Doug]

I had lots of rubble in my 30in deep overflows and they were crawling with them. I even fed them cyclop-eeze. Then the baby bangaii got in their and survived on them until they could eat larger food.

[titus]

Hello

See if you can use flashlight at night and make a video out of it. Love to see.


Titus