Can a Red Flame and a Half Black Angels Breed?

Are you sure that the dead white things are fish fry and not something else?

 

I'm not sure what it is but the fish are scurrying around eating them. I'm confused about the stuff on top of the tank. I looked at the dead ones through a magnifying glass and they appeared to be long and thin and definitely looked like something that was alive but the filter is shoving them around to much and it was hard to see. I've had Copepods and Rotifers in my tank and looked at them with a magnifyer. These dead critters are shaped more like a rotifer but seem to me to be bigger than I remembered them being.
I have 3 tanks going right now, none of the other tanks have this green stuff on the top and I am using the same bottles of food, iodine, magnesium, ect. in all three. I'm gonna turn the filter off this weekend and try to get a really good picture of this stuff. It looks like Plankton but I'm not an expert and really don't know what it is. I was hoping someone on 3Reef would be able to tell me.

 

Do you feed phytoplankton?

 

A couple times a year I add Copepods and Rotifers trying to get the pod population ready for Mandarins. I have got frozen plankton (it's brown with long things in it) that I feed to my coral once a month as a treat. I also add the Coral Accel into my tanks a couple times a month. I don't think I have directly added Phytoplankton into my tank but I do think, if I remember right, that it is shipped with the Rotifers and Copepods I added last December.

 

I just checked....the bottle I added in December was Planktonic free swimming Copepods and Rotifers with Live Nanochlorous and Tetraselmis Marine Algae. I add it a couple times a year as live food for my corals and hope to get a breeding pair of Mandarins in the next 6 months to add to my 30 gallon but I'm waiting for the pod population to build up. I split the bottle up between my 3 tanks so it was not all put into the larger tank.

 

The green stuff looks to me to be some sort of phytoplankton bloom, slime algae or maybe bacteria (or maybe a mixture of two or all of them). I can't be positive without looking at it under a microscope I'm afraid. Either way, I'd get the water at the surface moving to break it up, change the water and filter the hell out of it. Canister filters aren't the best for a reef tank because nitrates can build up in them so if you have to use it, I suggest that you clean it often and change the carbon as often as possible.

 

Great advice. I do have an old Microscope here somewhere that I used to use to look at diamonds....then I used it to look at my copepods and rotifers when I got them.... I'll look for it and will try to get some better pictures this weekend with the filter turned off.

 

Do you happen to know what I would be looking for if I find the microscope? Is there a noticable difference between Phytoplankton and Plankton. The article said they would become Planktonic. Isn't that almost the same thing?

 

I'm pretty sure that fish fry will be easily distinguishable from any kind of plankton that may be stuck in that muck. There are tons of pictures of zooplankton and phytoplankton on the internet that you can use as a reference as well.

 

Very helpful. I will dig out my microscope and try to look at them through it. My first thought was it was some sort of algae bloom but my Angels have acted so odd in the last couple weeks. When I read the eggs went to the top and were Planktonic I got really excited. And I knew someone out in 3Reef land would help me figure it out.
I will try to get a better look when I get home from work.