# Of all the creepy mud bugs on this planet, you, apparently, are the hottest.



## twoheadedfish (May 10, 2008)

Ok, I've found some sort of aquatic insect larvae in my 6g dwarf puffer tank immediately after feeding some frozen bloodworms. It had a pronged tail, six legs, and was about three quarters of an inch long. I did not take a picture because it creeped the bejeesus right out of me in a very primal sort of way. All in all, it looked most like a small, wet dragon fly (not a dragon fly larvae, but the fly itself minus the wings). It swam like an eel but crawled like a shrimp or crayfish. 

I pulled that sob and flushed it. i wore big-ass gloves and hasmat suit. 

So, if anyone might identify it by that description maybe i'll learn if there's the possibility of more of them, or where the hell it came from (the depths of Hades?).


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## Sunstar (Jul 29, 2008)

sounds like an earwig... ugh.


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## Calmer (Mar 9, 2008)

Yeah it is probably an earwig.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earwig


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## Sunstar (Jul 29, 2008)

oh god.. don't show me the link... oh god... ugh... *terrible PHOBIA*


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## Canadiancray (Apr 27, 2006)

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 ).

*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*


















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

Mosquitoes are holometabolous insects and therefore grow through an egg, larva, pupa to adult stage. The larvae and pupae are aquatic, (used as fish food too) the adults are free flying. At 80° F the larva goes through four larval instars in about 4 days before pupating. The pupa takes three days before the adult emerges. Harmless in the aquarium.

*Bloodworms*










Chironomid Larva
Scientific Name: Chironomus sp.
Group: Insecta
Size:15mm

These are sometimes called 'bloodworms' because of their bright red colour, but they are not worms at all. They are midge larvae. The larvae eat the dead organic material at the bottom of the pond. They can tolerate very low oxygen levels and are often found in very large numbers in the sludge at the bottom of stagnant ponds.


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## Sunstar (Jul 29, 2008)

I might have had moss animals.


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## twoheadedfish (May 10, 2008)

Calmer said:


> Yeah it is probably an earwig.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earwig


no no nononononono.....oh lord i hate i those things...


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## Sunstar (Jul 29, 2008)

You hate them? 

I positively fear them. My husband put a chocolate on my arm just after reading it, I jumpped screamed and threw it at him. My mind turned it into an earwig. 

So not an earwig. Good.


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## Riceburner (Mar 14, 2008)

I don't know...sounds kinda cute...


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## twoheadedfish (May 10, 2008)

know what though? i know what an earwig looks like and it didn't look like an earwig. it was about the same size. but it was yellow, stick bodied, and much more, um, scorpion like. 

definitely not a water scorpion though. thank god.


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## pat3612 (Jan 29, 2008)

If it looked like a little dragon it might have been a mayfly which is harmless.


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## Riceburner (Mar 14, 2008)

Mayflies

Adult 









Nymph


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## ksimdjembe (Nov 11, 2006)

or a damselfly larva, as they look an awful lot like dragonfly larvae, and can be more elongate and delicate looking, but have the same large eyes, and movements in the water.


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## Riceburner (Mar 14, 2008)

another nice one...

damselfly larva


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## twoheadedfish (May 10, 2008)

Well, it's almost certainly a damselfly, possibly a mayfly. i was almost considering letting the puffers make a snack of it but it freaked me out way to much. i am not a fan of creepy crawlers. egad. glad it's harmless - but, there's likely many more where that came from right?


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## Riceburner (Mar 14, 2008)

Yes. Many, many, many, many, many....more. Check behind you....under the bed....in the closet....what was that sound?


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## pat3612 (Jan 29, 2008)

Rice you are a baddd boy lol. If you get more dont worry the fish will eat them though Iam wondering where they came from.


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## twoheadedfish (May 10, 2008)

Riceburner said:


> Yes. Many, many, many, many, many....more. Check behind you....under the bed....in the closet....what was that sound?


GAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Pat3216 - met too, man. i'm in a condo six floors up. we rarely get any bugs at all and the windows/patio door have been closed for a loooong time.

these things tend to wiggle their way in somehow though.... uuuuugh.


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## iBetta (Jun 19, 2011)

I just read this thread now DX. how would you guys get rid of freshwater hydra? would bigger fish eat them?

thanks, 

ibetta


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## Cory (May 2, 2008)

I once discovered what looked like an underwater praying mantis in a planted tank many years ago... it was already dead or I had just killed it with the python cuz I only saw it when it was going up the tube. Nasty as hell. Still don't know what it was. 

Also found an earwig in a tank I had left mostly empty of water a few weeks back when I was bringing it here to set up. Didn't realize that was what it was at the time but now do.


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