there's a THING in my tank!

There's a THING in my tank, I don't know what it is, I only just caught a glimpse of it while looking at my babies. It looked a bit like an underwater woodlouse!

Ran for camera - batteries died, so no pic

THING gone again. What could it be?

Could it be a shrimp of some sort? Would that be ok with my babies? Or is there some horrible underwater woodlouse type of THING that eats little fish?

I bought some azolla moss and amazonian frogbit about a week ago from an ebay seller, so assuming the THING hitched a ride.

Will contact them and see what they have to say.

dont know what it is. it could be a shrimp never heard of a under water woodlouse lol
a mate of mine bought some plants a few months back and ended up with loads of zebra danios in is tank.
so its more than likely that it came with the plants you bought

thanks, have emailed the senders of the plants to ask. It doesn't look exactly like a shrimp, more flattened.

Been doing some searching of "things" people have found in their tanks, and it looks a worryingly little bit like a picture of a dragonfly larva. Not the long earwiggy ones, but a shorter, flatter grey one, which is very very bad news for my fish.

Plus I noticed today that one of my danios has gone. I found a tiny piece of skeleton in the corner of the tank. Assumed it had died in the night and the others got hungry, but now I am having second thoughts

How the hell do I get the "thing" out? It's fast and hides under the many ornaments and stones and bits of wood.

Looked a bit like this:

http://www.naturephoto-cz.com/photos/krasensky/dragonfly-larva-1111.jpg

but need to get another look to be sure.

Feel a bit sick!

errrrrrrrrrrrr thats ugly i would remove all the orniments out the tank and try and syphon the ugly bugger up
good luck

thats horrible get rid asap

miracles abound! I caught it on the bubble curtain, was hard to shift off, it can hold on tight (is there a "gives me the shudders" icon?)

Put a pic of it in my gallery - not a great one I'm afraid, my camera isn't good at close ups!

Anyone know what it is? Seriously hope it's just the one very active one and not a whole load of them in there. Feel a bit suspicious that it was too easy to catch!

Well, i cant find the pic of it in your gallery but be careful what you all say about these things...They are the current study of my life and i love them all.

The one that you linked to, for those who missed it in the link title is a Dragonfly larvae, what looks like a Hemicorduliidae. Very common in every waterway around the world. If you have seen a dragonfly, chances are it was one of them. However, to get one in your tank is exceptionally rare. I take it that you havent seen any dragonflies cruising through your living room of late That said, i have seen it once or twice before. I need to see a pic before i can tell you for sure, even a blury one

There are many things that look similar to that little chap that are far more likely. Damselfly larvae are more common in tanks as they are more common in houses. however, their fry are elogated.

I study aquatic waterbugs for a living, being an aquatic ecologist and all. My PhD is looking at shrimp, damselflies, drangonflies and diving beetles and how thye disperse so i am fairly familiar with them.

Hiya

I can't offer any advise on what it is, however, this is another good reason to quarantine not only fish LOL It's usually pesky snail eggs that hitch a ride with plants, but this little booger doesn't sound pleasant at all. I did read of someone else having the same problem a few months ago (on another site) and I believe that they had recently had new plants too.

Sorry I couldn't be more help.

Angi

Urrrrghhhhh...thank god you got rid of this thing...

ok, having caught it and examined it in daylight, I think I may just have been getting hysterical about a shrimp!

It has a segmented body (tried uploading pic again, maybe not been approved yet?) - as does the dragonfly larvae, but it is more translucent looking, with a flatter section at the tail end and a forked, erm, "bit" on the end. Definitely not the normal type of larvae as they are longer, then saw the pic of the stouter one in the above link and panicked.

I noticed two more things on the filter last night and when I took it out I could identify them as "little shrimpy things", very much like the ones we find under stones at our local river. Standard, lots of legs, curls up, wriggles and shoots through the water type of thing.

So now I am wondering if the THING is just a large old ugly shrimp? (sorry, shrimp-lovers!)

I put a straw next to it to see how it would respond - it flipped over onto its back and wiggled it's legs in the air/water, not what I would expect from a top predator, more like an attempt to play dead, or just inability to escape effectively (like an underwater woodlouse!)

I did wonder if it was a shrimp initially, but it doesn't curl up and shoot through the water like the others, it just walks everywhere, flattened out.

So now I have fish in the tank, a bowl with shrimps in and my washing up bowl with a THING in it!

Think I might put the THING and shrimps in together - if they get on, I'll assume they're all shrimps, if the THING eats them, then I'll assume it's something else.

So, now my dilemma is - what do I do with the ones I know are shrimps? Can they live in the tank with my fish? They've obviously been growing in there ok for the last week or so? Not sure what else I can do. Feel uneasy about releasing them into our river since they didn't come from there in the first place.

BTW, I love dragonflies, so I wouldn't hurt it! We have loads of beautiful demoiselles out at the moment (but not in my house, they're about 15 mins walk away!).

Its a beetle larvae!

Nine segmented body, two cerci (tails) and I would bet that if you looked at its face it would have two mandibles.

They are predatory, and hunt smaller things but i doubt they would go for the bristlenose wirgglers. If i was you, I would just leave them in there as they wouldn't be doing any harm.

thanks, happy to have them in the tank if they can survive ok and won't eat the fish

have tried to upload 2 clearer pics to my gallery, one showing THING near a shrimp for comparison (they don't really look the same!), and one that is a little bit more in focus than my original close up.

it's a water hog louse!

http://www.visitpembs.com/Alma%20House%20Images/Inverts%20Allt%20Y%20Bulla/anglers_net_hoglouse.jpg

now, why didn't I recongise that as soon as I saw it (tut!)???

Now I just have to find out what that means!

Wild About Britain Forum said the fish are more likely to eat it that the other way around!

Mmmmm...protein!!

As soon as I started reading your posts I knew you had a water louse! they are completely harmeless and as my chums on WAB have said they are nothing to worry about as far as fish are concerned, I have had many hitch rides on water plants that have been sent to me and think nothing of placing them in my tank for my fish to eat, smaller fish won't be able to though! they don't tend to survive that long in an aquarium though especially if it is heated.

Skipped downstairs to put new friend in tank ... goldfish ate it as soon as it hit the water! Gutted!

mooncat wrote:

Skipped downstairs to put new friend in tank ... goldfish ate it as soon as it hit the water! Gutted!

I'm sorry...really I am..but the way you worded that.....I just about spewed coffee all over my keyboard.

My sides hurt.

oh, my poor hog louse - it took quite a lot of chewing too! I kept hoping that the goldfish would spit him back out but he just chewed him up for ages.

Greedy thing, it got a spirulina tablet stuck in it's mouth last week, thought it might die!

The humour is not lost on me though I do feel really guilty!

LOL!! Thank you for my "laugh of the day".

sure my hog-louse-in-heaven is pleased his horrible death cheered you up! Were you an Ancient Roman in a previous life?



:cyclops:

(what's that supposed to mean? who writes about cyclops on a fish forum?)

mooncat wrote:

sure my hog-louse-in-heaven is pleased his horrible death cheered you up! Were you an Ancient Roman in a previous life?



:cyclops:

(what's that supposed to mean? who writes about cyclops on a fish forum?)

...I was a Mongol Just the way you worded it cracked me up.

In Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, a cyclops :cyclops: (pronounced /ˈsaɪklɒps/; Greek: Κύκλωψ, Kuklōps), is a member of a primordial race of giants, each with a single eye in the middle of its forehead. The classical plural is cyclopes :cyclops: (pronounced /saɪˈkloʊpiːz/; Greek: Κύκλωπες, Kuklōpes), though the conventional plural cyclopses :cyclops: is also used in English. The name is widely thought to mean "circle-eyed".[

Hesiod described one group of cyclopes :cyclops: and the epic poet Homer described another, though other accounts have also been written by the playwright Euripides, poet Theocritus and Roman epic poet Virgil. In Hesiod's Theogony, Zeus releases three Cyclopes :cyclops: :cyclops: :cyclops: , the sons of Uranus and Gaia, from the dark pit of Tartarus. They provide Zeus' thunderbolt, Hades' helmet of invisibility, and Poseidon's trident, and the gods use these weapons to defeat the Titans. In a famous episode of Homer's Odyssey, the hero Odysseus encounters the Cyclops :cyclops: Polyphemus, the son of Poseidon and a nereid (Thoosa), who lives with his fellow :cyclops: Cyclopes :cyclops: in a distant country. The connection between the two groups has been debated in antiquity and by modern scholars. It is upon Homer's account that Euripides and Virgil based their accounts of the mythical creatures.
I bet they ate fish while on their journey!
Thank you Wikipedia.

Hope it made you smile! :cyclops:

Thanks for the re-cap! I did Classical Mythology for the first year of my degree!

Well, done Wikipedia! I give you a 2:1, would have been a first but you wrote less than 1500 words, so I have to mark you down!

I wouldn't say "cyclopses", it's common and vulgar, like saying "fishies" instead of fish!

:face:

PS, just found this whilst looking for more info about my dear departed water hog louse ... it's a list of THINGS that people sometimes find in their tanks, good for identifying them quickly and deciding whether they should stay or go...

http://www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/277805-hitchhikers-in-freshwater-tanks-ponds/