What's that bug? How to recognize them

[NutZilla]

i have a bucket of needle leaves fern that is infected by this alien thing, not sure if its an insect or parasitic plant. anyone can id them? a solution will be wonderful. thanks.

[steak]

Cool! Definitely doesn't look animal. I think it is a colonial, green alga.

[steak]

Or, maybe your plant has cancer or a prion. Can you scrape that stuff off?

I'd treat it with hydrogen peroxide, and see what happens: make sure the water is still, pipet like 1-2 mL onto one affected leaf, and look at the results after 24 hours. That won't really confirm anything, but it may kill the organism if it isn't cancer/prion.

Maybe its a slime mold. According to the pictures, I would certainly put it down as a plantae.

[NutZilla]

Originally Posted by steak

Or, maybe your plant has cancer or a prion. Can you scrape that stuff off?

I'd treat it with hydrogen peroxide, and see what happens: make sure the water is still, pipet like 1-2 mL onto one affected leaf, and look at the results after 24 hours. That won't really confirm anything, but it may kill the organism if it isn't cancer/prion.

Maybe its a slime mold. According to the pictures, I would certainly put it down as a plantae.

yes it can be scrape off. i tried dip it in bleach today, lets see if anything will happen.

[ravensgate]

I wanted to bring up another bug. I had a huge infestation of these things in my last tank and no matter how I described it everyone kept saying 'planaria' even though I KNEW it wasn't planaria. I search for a couple of months and couldn't find anything and wound up breaking down the tank and starting a new one. AFTER I did that, I was looking up another bug and FINALLY found what I had had in the last tank. It's called Rhabdocoela. I did a search in this thread and didn't find any matches so I'm going to guess it hadn't been brought up. These are flat, white worms but they lack the triangle head or eyes planaria has. They climb up the tank walls, go through the substrate, etc. So for those folks who have flat white worms and know they aren't planaria but don't know what they are, they could be these Here's a photo. If you do a Google search you'll hit a good thread on Shrimpnow that goes through the differences between them and planaria.

http://www.crustahunter.com/sites/de...jpg?1304201527

[altiuscitius]

I have a fluval ebi, with about 15 rcs in it. Been set up about 3 months. I started with 25 shrimp. Had a few females get berried, I saw 2 babies grow up to a decent size after a month, and after 2 months I started to see 3 or 4 tiny babies again. I have lots of mopani driftwood (that looks like swiss cheese), breeding tubes and plants, so its difficult to count them all. Ive never been able to count more then 15 of the originals at once. Ive found 3 corpses of dead, very large shrimp, so their deaths may have been old age or overfeeding.

I had, what I now know to be, harmless seed shrimp, covering the glass. I freaked out and I scaped it clean, and did some frequent water changes, and havent seen them since. Then I started to get whiteflys on the surface of my water, which were actually a harmless aphid type creature. Lots of surface skimming water changes and manually netting them out got rid of them.

Now my new problem, I let the glass become covered in "film" for the babies to graze on, since the tank isnt a show tank, its just a cherry shrimp breeder for my main tank. Some brown dust, probably diatoms, some algae, various gunky things. But now the glass has white worms growing on it. They remind me of marine spaghetti worms if anyone ever kept reef tanks. They have a light brown tube made of detritus that is up to an inch long, they have one long white tentacle about an inch long that they stick out of the tube, and wave everywhere and scrape the glass all around them clean. They are not hydra. Ive seen hydra before, these are not hydra. Ive tried to take pictures, but I only have a panasonic point and shoot (the lumix dmx-zs3 if anyone knows how to use it for fish pictures) and Ive spent hours trying all the setting, but I just cant get pictures of tiny things in the tank. They almost seem like white tubifex worms, that prefer to glue themselves to plants and glass rather then live in the substrate.

But they freak me out. My shrimp population is shrinking, not exploding, and these worms worry me. I scrubbed the tank clean, scraped the glass, stirred up the gravel to get any out of there, did a few huge water changes, probably lost a few baby shrimp, but I thought it was worth it to get rid of them all. Today on closer inspection during a water change, I see that my java fern and rotala plants are covered in these tubes now too...


TLDR - 1inch long freshwater spagetti worms are corrupting my shrimp tank, and Im having issues with shrimp deaths... are the worms the problem, or are the worms and shrimps symptoms of the same problem. Maybe overfeeding?

[ShyShrimpDoc]

A few more for the list. These are from a microscope. Varying magnifications. These are two different nemotodes (intestinal parasites). The lower one moves like an inch worm, the upper just slithers. They are brought to you courtesy of a pleco (sensitive to paragaurd, not sensitive to hydrogen peroxide dips, and like plant travel). The feet on the lower one looked wider before I hit it with the alcohol to make it sit still.

[ShyShrimpDoc]

This is a harmless protozoa. Cool looking critter, likes hanging out in plants and detritus.

[ShyShrimpDoc]

This is a nasty parasite. It seems to have a serious affinity for the exoskeleton of the shrimp. I don't know if it kills the shrimp itself, or just opens them up to bacterial infection. The bodies and shells were coated in both (but they were also dead several hours before being placed under the microscope, and good bacteria should have started to break them down at that point). If you need more info on these check the shrimp diseases thread http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/sh...51#post1956951

And yes those are chloroplasts, they do use photosynthesis. The alcohol (same slide as the victim below, same dang fish too) did a number on the body, but it kept it still long enough for me to figure out how it moves.

[diwu13]

Originally Posted by ShyShrimpDoc

This is a nasty parasite. It seems to have a serious affinity for the exoskeleton of the shrimp. I don't know if it kills the shrimp itself, or just opens them up to bacterial infection. The bodies and shells were coated in both (but they were also dead several hours before being placed under the microscope, and good bacteria should have started to break them down at that point). If you need more info on these check the shrimp diseases thread http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/sh...51#post1956951

And yes those are chloroplasts, they do use photosynthesis. The alcohol (same slide as the victim below, same dang fish too) did a number on the body, but it kept it still long enough for me to figure out how it moves.

Do you have a picture of how the shrimp looks covered in these? Is this "vorticella"?

[ShyShrimpDoc]

Other than looking stressed right before dropping dead, and excessive grooming of their tail region, they look and act normal.

[diwu13]

So what made you put the shrimp under the microscope? Like, what made you suspect something other than natural death?

[ShyShrimpDoc]

Natural death occurs rarely. Not between 3 and 10 shrimp per day, with the numbers trending higher as consecutive days pass.

It did hit my adult population worse than the young, but both were affected. Before this there had not been a death (other than newborns which just disapear) in over 6 months. At least 40 shrimp died last week. Luckily it was a large colony. This morning after less than 48 hours of treatment it appears the death toll is dropping. There is only one in the tank that look stressed right now. It should be noted there are still about 100 shrimp in the tank, so I don't think the drop is from running out if shrimp to victimize. They also are picking at themselves less. Fingers crossed for the ones that are left.

This might be a subspecies of vorticella, but all the pictures I could find had propulsion by a single flagella. Thus there might be another name for it. I did some looking around but was unable to locate it. Vorticella is the closest I have seen thus far.

[niedogg]

Hey everyone, I'm new here but have consulted this forum many times. Recently I have had a 5.5 gallon tank with CRS, plants, and a piece of driftwood. The shrimp have slowly died off and now I've noticed these small, white bugs. They crawl around on the substrate. They resemble a shrimp when they swim.

Anybody know what these creepy things are? Are they harmful?

[AquariumNoob]

Awesome information, dude. Thanks Was wondering what those weird worms in my substrate was loll.