All my pods are gone

[Gumby]

last night while checking my tank, i noticed that all of my copepods are gone.

i do have some rather large bristle worms (1mm wide, my best guess), could they have eaten them?

 

[Montanareefer]

What do you have for fish? Some fish can make short work of the copepods!

You may still have some as they go through stages of production. I have seen times where I can't see any and then bang there are little white bugs all over my glass!

 

[Imperial]

I heard from other people before of over population but I'm not sure how that works. I'll stick around to see other people comments

 

[Gumby]

its a 75g tank with a 20 gal sump.

coral beauty angel
royal gramma
ocilarus clown
mandarin

skunk cleaner shrimp
10-20 blue leg and scarlet leg crabs
countless snails (nassarius, cerith, turbo, astrea)

tank has been up for over 2 years and there has always been plenty in the tank at night since then, always running around in the sand.

 

[Montanareefer]

When did you get the mandarin? This fish can wipe out a pod population in no time!

 

[mick77]

Are these pods the same ones I find clinging to my filter sock everytime I use a Phosphate sponge or carbon? Everytime I pull out one of the bags, there's dozens of these little almost roly-poly bugs clinging to it. I have to physically remove them and place them back into the tank. These are good right? I always belived so, but would feel at better ease with some verification. Thanks!

 

[Montanareefer]

Mick77 without a pic it would be hard to say for sure but it sounds like your ok to me!

 

[Gumby]

had him for 1 year maybe alittle more.

i need to make a correction, its amphipods that are missing. i will check tonight to see if the copopods are missing as well.

the mandarin seems to be well fed, he's not fat, but he looks well fed.

 

[mwrager]

Yes they are very good for your tank. They are very good at cleaning up your tank.

 

[ReefLady]

rolly-polly sounds more like isopods to me, they can be good or bad, but if you've never seen any attached to your fish I'd say you can assume they're good.

 

[Curtswearing]

Originally posted by mick77
Everytime I pull out one of the bags, there's dozens of these little almost roly-poly bugs clinging to it.

You just told people you were from Missouri.

Most area's of the country call them pillbugs. However, Roly Poly's would be an amphipod most likely. There are a number of species but most people have gammarus amphipods in their tank. http://www.museum.vic.gov.au/crust/amphbiol.html

Copepods are nearly invisible. I call them the Little White Thingy's.

 

[Gumby]

YEP, THAT LOOKS LIKE THEM. i guess i need to make another correction. its the isopods that are missing. just like in curtswearing's attachment.

there used to alot of them in my tank and as of last night, i did not see any.

where'd they go? will they come back?

 

[mnreefman]

Originally posted by Gumby
had him for 1 year maybe alittle more.

i need to make a correction, its amphipods that are missing. i will check tonight to see if the copopods are missing as well.

the mandarin seems to be well fed, he's not fat, but he looks well fed.

manderians make very very short work of pods... in a year 1 could wipe out a pod population... however if you have a fuge it will keep feeding the tank with new baby pods constantly

 

[NaH2O]

Originally posted by Curtswearing
You just told people you were from Missouri.

Most area's of the country call them pillbugs. However, Roly Poly's would be an amphipod most likely. There are a number of species but most people have gammarus amphipods in their tank. http://www.museum.vic.gov.au/crust/amphbiol.html

Copepods are nearly invisible. I call them the Little White Thingy's.

Curt, I disagree. The roly poly's would be isopods: Check out this link ->
Isopods.

Also, in Chicago we called them roly poly's...i never heard the term pillbug until my entomology class in college

 

[Gumby]

The little guys i am refering to look like little shrimp with screwed up tails.

like in kurt's attachement 1st picture on the left, but mine look all white.

it always looked like i had lots of them up until last night.

 

[NaH2O]

Check out the 7th pic down Hitchhiker FAQ - Amphipod . You can also create little rubble piles for your pods to reproduce in....that way you can help maintain a population for your mandarin.

 

[reefshadow]

hi, Gumby-

Microfauna seems to go through cycles in my tank as well.

Another possibility is your centropyge angel. I had 3 of these in my 125 display and their decimation of the fauna was one of the two reasons I removed them. They would spend all day prowling the rockwork looking for pods:closed: .

Good Luck!
Becca

 

[wooddood]

thanks for the info all.

 

[Gumby]

yes definately thankyou.

i will build a rock pile, but the angel has to stay, its the wife's.


yes, amphipods.....that's the one. how long to they typically get.

i found one in my filtration (in my 30 gal) that had to be just short of 3/8" (my best guess). man, he was a big sucker.

 

[fidojoe]

I have tons and tons of amphipods running all over my tank at night, I thought I killed them all off one day when I added more sand to my tank, but a week later, they're back! Every time I clean out my fluval, I am forced to kill about a hundred of them, because I don't want to put all of the waste that accumulates in there back into the tank just to replace the little bugs that get stuck in there, which I will find about a hundred more 2 weeks later. Capeopods are a different story, I can never seem to find any of these, then agian, I don't know where to look for them.