How small are new RCS

It may have been a copepod...are they white? I have them in my RCS tank, and my Betta spawning tank. They make good food for the betta fry, but I am not sure RCS will eat them...my RCS tank gets overrun with them and I do 30% weekly water changes. I think if I did less, I'd have to move the RCS into a different tank and just let the copepods have that one. LOL

I also have some other mite type critter in my betta spawning tank...these are brownish-orangeish. I kill them as soon as I see them...these tend to stay at the top of the water line, and not actually in the tank.

You can tell whether a white speck is a cyclops (a copepod) by the way it swims. Cyclops often swim like squirrels on crack. Baby shrimp seem to swim like adult shrimp.

well baby shrimp look like little adults so you should be able to see that it is a shrimp from the moment its born. The smallest they would be is about the size of the eggs the females carry around.

I have a problem with these copepod in the shrimp tanks....where do they come from? These's so many, it's scary...i try to squish them with my algae cleaner. lol

well I'm afraid to do any vacuuming because I see some of the baby shrimps in the gravel.
I guess what I saw was copepod. It was white but i didn't notice how is swam. I just saw it crawl over a piece of gravel.

Baby shrimp are remarkably fast and avoid the gravel vac, so I'd say you can go ahead and vacuum your gravel. Do it for a while then check in the bucket for any before you chunk it.

Baby shrimp are fast, even the smallest one. Just use a turkey baster and push along the tiny white thing you see. If it squirms, then it's a copepod, if it jumps or swims away, then it's a shrimp.

I only saw it once so I'm not sure what i saw. It is really hard to tell what is going on in that tank. The back wall is a moss wall there is a piece of drift wood in the center that is covered in moss and java fern and almost the entire substrate is covered in java moss. I usually have to take most everything out to gravel vac. So I scoop the water out 1/wk for a wc and maybe once a month I'll do a good cleaning. There isn't anything in there but shrimp.

fishymatty said:

well I'm afraid to do any vacuuming because I see some of the baby shrimps in the gravel.
I guess what I saw was copepod. It was white but i didn't notice how is swam. I just saw it crawl over a piece of gravel.

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A few fish fry (guppy, swordtail, etc.) will take care of the copepods. They won't bother the srhimp until the fry grow a little. I started to move my fry out as they begin to bother my shrimp.