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What's that bug? How to recognize them

267K views 373 replies 173 participants last post by  Arty and Noodle 
#1 · (Edited)
I don't know if this belongs under "Shrimp" or "General Planted Tank Discussion", the questions about tiny aquatic creatures might usually be posted in the latter one, but I've always used to put shrimp, other invertebrates, bugs and weird things under same classification.

Here's some of the most common tiny creatures found from the aquariums.

Copepods, Cyclops



Size: 0,1 - 0,2 cm, 0.04 - 0.1 inches

Copepods are small and funny looking one eyed crustaceans. They usually move around the tank glass and other surfaces, usually with one short leap at a time. Harmless, cute, there's lots of different coloured species.

Water Fleas, Daphnia



Size: 0,1 - 0,5 cm, 0.04 - 1/4 inches

Water fleas are usually used as fish food. They are tiny crustaceans and are easily recognized of their jerky vertical "swimming". They are completely harmless and really interesting creatures. I call them fat, sad reindeers (well, they look like it :D).


Seed Shrimp, Ostracoda



Size: 0,1 - 0,2 cm, 0.04 - 0.1 inches

Seed shrimp are tiny seed shaped crustaceans. They are usually a bit bigger than Copepods. They move in a same fashion as Copepods, eating all kinds of nice things from the glass/plant/etc. surfaces and you can see them walking inside the substrate too. Sometimes they swim in open water looking like drunken bees. Here's a really young CRS baby looking at a seed shrimp. Really cute, harmless.

Freshwater Limpet - Acroloxus lacustris




Size: 0,1 - 0,8 cm ; 0.04 - 0.3 inches

Since freshwater limpets, Acroloxus lacustris, are so small and also move really slowly, it might be hard to identify them as snails. They are small and can't do much damage to plants, but since they are small, it's impossible to find and remove eggs and the baby snails. Harmless.

Something that looks a bit similar are Nerite eggs. They are singular, white, hard, round or oval shaped and about 1 - 2 mm in diameter.

Tubifex



Size: 2 - 5 cm, 3/4 - 2 inches

Red, yummy worms (used as fish food too) which live inside the substrate. If disturbed and dig up, they will form a ball, if left alone, they will gather pieces of sand/gravel around their body forming a sort of tube where they live in and they'll stick their head out of the substrate looking like red hairgrass. If there's lots of them, the substrate is too dirty and might be good idea to do something about it. Only a few Tubifex in the substrate isn't anything to worry about though. They are harmless.

Nematodes
Size: 0,1 - 0,3 cm, max. 0.1 inches

Nematodes are small, thin, white/transparent free-living roundworms and the "swim" moving themselves in a wave like pattern (well, forming an S shape). If disturbed, they will swim around wriggling briskly. You can find them from the substrate and they are the ones that might appear from the filter when you turn it on. These ones are harmless, but as with any other "pest", if there's too many of them, you are either overfeeding or just not keeping the tank clean enough of debris, decaying plant matter.

Planaria, flatworms



Size: 0,3 - 1 cm, 0.1 - 3/8 inches

Non-parasitic flatworms. Crossed-eyed grossness, just pure yucky! The only small creature I dislike (I get shivers down my spine even thinking about them). If you split it, it will regenerate and you will end up having 2 planaria. There seems to be several different colours in the common ones found in aquariums, transparent, white, brown and red. There's actually nothing really horrible about them, but they can bother small shrimp and snails and might eat fish/snail eggs.

They love shrimp pellets, pieces of meat, dead fish/shrimp and they will also eat small live creatures if they can catch them. They move on the surfaces, even under the water surface and are most active by night. If disturbed, they will retract themselves (shorter and wider), let go and drop down to the bottom.

Hydra



Size: 0,3 - 1,5 cm, 0.1 - 1/2 inches

Hydra are beautiful, but a wee bit annoying creatures. They spend their life attached to surfaces (plants, glass, filter, decoration), they can move a bit, but usually don't have the need to do that. If disturbed, they will retract their tentacles and body to small buds. They catch small creatures (copepods, Daphnia etc.) with their tentacles which can sting, making it easier for them to haul the pray in to their mouth opening. They pose no threat to adult fish, shrimp or snails (might cause some irritation if they touch the Hydra), but newborn fish and shrimp fry are in danger.

The species in the picture is Hydra viridissima and the green color comes from algae living inside the hydra.

Bryozoa, moss animals



Size: individual creatures are only a few millimetres long, the colony can be tens of centimetres long

Bryozoans are interesting colonial creatures. They look a bit like corals with the hard skeleton structure of the colony. The individual creatures, zooids, are inside their own small part of the colony and they eat small particles (phytoplankton, zooplankton) floating in the water by guiding them (and water) towards their mouth opening with the fan like tentacles. If disturbed, the zooids will retract their tentacles inside the colony walls. They are harmless and really interesting.

Springtails, Collembola



Size: 0,1 - 0,3 cm, 0.04 - 0.1 inches

Springtails are cool hexapods. They are used as live food for fish that eat from the surface, for example small Betta species and labyrinth fishes. You can find them more often from soil or leaf litter than from the water surface, but once in a while they will appear on the floating aquarium plants. If disturbed, they will spring to safety releasing their "spring" (furcula) that's normally bent under their body. They can jump surprisingly far (several centimeters). Harmless and cute.

Mosquito larvae




Text coming later.

Bloodworms



Text coming later
 
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#307 ·
I have a daphnia culture that has a lot of these tiny green worm casings on the cylinder. I had them in a previous fry tank as well, that had no substrate. The worms that come out of the casings appear to be able to hold the glass with their back legs(?)/tip, and sometimes free float around, sometimes act a bit like an inch worm... I saw them trying to eat fish eggs hung under a rock as well. In a previous post, something similar was posted, but the replies were tubiflex, and blood worms... Both types of worms are way larger than anything I typically get from these. What i have are very tiny worms, no longer than 1/4" ever. any ideas?
 

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#308 ·
I saw something in my shrimp tank that look just like tubifex but floating in the water column instead of at bottom (where I think they should be?). They wiggle through the water with water flow. Are they actually tubifex or?! At first I thought they were planaria but they have rounded body as opposed to flat body planaria. They are about the same size as tubifex too and I don't think my camera can catch a good shot of them.
 
#309 ·
Nemotodes. Also harmless. I have had a huge population bloom of them in my shrimp tanks as well. I had to introduce some fish since they looked disgusting in large numbers :\
 
#313 ·
That does look like a leech since one end seems stuck on the plastic. Just soak the plants in some other container for ~1day. The leechs and other stuff should journey off the plants in that time.
 
#317 ·
ok i found a critter in my nano that doesnt resemble anything in the first post. i originally thought it was a daphnia but it has hind legs.

Its about the size of one of the eco complete granules and climbs and moves over the substrate as a gorilla would move.

Its white in color and seems to be the only one in the tank so far as I know. The plant is heavily planted with a driftwood and 5 adult and 3 juvie cherry shrimps and oto. there are a dozen mts as well.

hope someone can help ID it.

i thought of trying to capture it but it crawls very quickly. It only travels on the gravel and does not appear to swim or go against the glass. Kinda resembles a flea but google searches came up empty.
 
#330 ·
I discovered by (pleasant) accident that assassin snails eradicate freshwater limpets. I had limpets in my 5g shrimp tank for a few years. Nothing I did ever got rid of them. That is until I added some assassin snails. I added them to eat some MTS snails in the tank, but then noticed the limpets disappeared. I've never seen limpets ever since. So it seems it had to be the assassin snails finally did the trick!
 
#333 · (Edited)
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.
 
#335 ·
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/default/files/Rhadbocoela_0.jpg?1304201527
 
#348 ·
Dang, been dosing No-Planaria for 3 days with no luck. I think this is what I have, but tough to tell with my cheap magnifying glass. Any ideas on how to kill?!?!

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/default/files/Rhadbocoela_0.jpg?1304201527
 
#336 ·
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?
 
#337 · (Edited)
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.
 

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#339 ·
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/showthread.php?p=1956951#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.
 

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#343 · (Edited)
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.
 
#344 ·
Does anybody know what this bug is?

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?
 

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#346 ·
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?
Surprised no one got back to you yet. Might be too late but those are scuds. Generally harmless, but some species have larger claws and may prey on shrimp. Chances are, they out competed the shrimp for food, which killed them off.
 
#347 · (Edited)
Just bought some Hornwort at the local mega-LFS (TFP in Lancaster) and did a Potassium Permanganate dip to try to kill the snails that came along with it (I don't mind the tiny ramshorns, but I don't ever want to have MTS again!).

After removing the hornwort for rinsing (it's not in my tanks yet), I saved some of the water at the bottom of the bottle to observe the snails for a few hours and make sure they're actually dead before I move the hornwort into my tanks. After letting it sit for a while, I came back to see if any of them had moved (not yet) and discovered a critter I'd never seen before swimming around! I looked through this thread, but I haven't seen anything quite like it.

At first glance, you'd never be able to tell them from the other hornwort needles that fell off in the container: they're no more than 1/4" long, very slightly thicker than a hornwort needle, brownish-green, and their bodies stay perfectly straight when they swim (propelled by tiny, invisible legs). I tried to take a picture, but they're so small there's no visible detail. They are the two top-most "needles" in this picture below. Any ideas what they could be?



Oh, and BTW, finally made it to 100 posts!!
 
#358 ·
Yes, these are aphids. Very variable in color, size, winged or not, etc. Good fish food, not good for plants.

Better now? Sorry for the delay. :icon_lol:

I've been finding these small bugs in the buttom of my bucket after hoovering the gravel on my tropical fish tank, their really small so I've never been able to identify them before and found this thread a while back and just presumed they where copepods or daphnia, seed shrimp etc.... and didn't really worry but have just got a small microscope and managed to get a photo, it doesn't really look like anything I've seen in this post to me, I would appreciate any advice on what they are and how I get rid of them if I can...?
Yes, they are seed shrimp/Ostracods. Really harmless.

Can this be made into a sticky?
I like referencing this occasionally.
This is part of the collective sticky in the Shrimp/Other forum: http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/showthread.php?t=184517 Rather than having 12 stickies clogging up the forum, we collected them all into one super-sticky.
 
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