White Spots On Glass

[karaim]

Over the last couple of days I have noticed some white spots (about 1/10th of an inch) on the back of my tank. My pencils urchins also have them on their spikess. Are these parasytes? Worms of some kind? Algae? Or a disease?

Any suggestions would help.

Thanks,
Eugene

 

[bae1994]

pics would help

 

[seffieuk]

Could be copods, snails, astraia (sp) - in fact loads of things and probably harmless - get a magnifying glass and have a look. My tank walls are covered with white dots at the moment as well, think mine are a mix of snail babies and copods

Seffie x

 

[karaim]

I examined the white dots and they seem to be like a spiral - starting at the center and spiraling out. It does look like eggs of some sort. Could it be crabs, shrimp, snails, urchnis?

I will try to get some pictures later today.

 

[SkiFletch]

They're mini tube worms . Filter feeders that sometimes grow quickly in population. Usually their numbers wane as they filter out whatever it is that they eat.

 

[karaim]

They're mini tube worms . Filter feeders that sometimes grow quickly in population. Usually their numbers wane as they filter out whatever it is that they eat.

Thanks Skifletch. They seem to multiple rather quickly, but they don't seem to be taking over the tank.

I tried scrubbing a couple off, but no luck. It seems they're stuck on to the tank pretty tightly.

Will these guys grow? Will they develop into small feather dusters? Will my fish eventually eat them?

Thanks.

 

[xxBarneyxx]

They dont tend to get very big (few MM across at max). As ski says they can sometimes spread really quickly and you will have loads of them and then not long after they all disapear again as the food source runs out.