Tony- It's hard to say what's really going on but with any luck there's nothing actually wrong. All of the foods you mentioned as well as the waste products from the Polypterus make good food for copepods and oligochaete worms, and it's likely that this is what you see. Yes, they will crawl around on the Polypterus because Polypterus have pretty thick skin and lay around on the bottom alot. However ther may be something else going on, maybe even something unrelated. I'd like take a look at your various bugs some time. Write to me off list and tell me how I can get some samples from you. Steev ------------------ To unsubscribe from this list, please send mail to majordomo@thekrib.com with "Unsubscribe gsas-member" in the body of the message. Archives of this list can be found at http://lists.thekrib.com/gsas-member/