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Horrible looking insect from my tank, any one help with an ID

3K views 6 replies 4 participants last post by  fryup 
#1 ·
#2 ·
by the looks of that i would say it was some sort of dragon fly nimf...(dragon fly baby).......they should be removed asap because as they get bigger they will eat small fish and eventually as they grow they may take older fish..........REMOVE IT FROM YOUR TANK!!.....GOOD LUCK :):)....there nasty little things
 
#4 ·
IF it's a dragon fly nymph (can't look at the pic because of a slow connection) then I've found those in my mosquito-collection pans outside. (I leave standing water outside so that my fish can feast on them.)

I read somewhere that they will eat fry, but never heard of them attacking anything larger than fry...
I dropped them in my tank with the mosquito larvae and my guppies (young and old) tore them limb from limb and ate them. Quite entertaining actually, my guppies turned into pirahnas.

If you're still getting them in your tank, I have to assume that you don't have a top on it. Get a tighter-fitting lid so bugs can't lay eggs inside it.

I don't think eggs take very long to hatch, but if you raise the temperature they'll hatch faster.... So at least then you can be sure they're all hatched in a few days and watch them closely.

If you have any larger fish (over 4 inches, cichlids for example) I'm sure they'd love a protein-rich snack.

--- I just looked at the picture. Whoa! Those are nothing like the dragonfly babies I've seen.
Do you have any scaleless fish or inverts in your tank? If not, try something like ich-away or salt.
Multicellular parasites, insects, shrimp, crabs, etc are all fairly closely related- treatments for ich might get rid of the insects.

How big are they? In the pics they look a couple inches long... lol.You must have introduced the eggs somehow-
If you use rainwater, stop.
If you just bought some plants, let us know where. They might have hitchhiked in on plants.
If you used soil substrate or collected driftwood or something from a pond/river/anything else outside, now you know why not to.

I would probably raise the temp as I said, and just make them all hatch. They'll grow faster, be hungrier, but
at least in a couple days to a week you'll know they're all exterminated.

Looks kind of cool though- wish I had one. :)
I'd get a gallon jar and try to keep it or move it outside, but thats just me. I can't even squish bugs.
 
#6 · (Edited)
thanks guys, i made the mistake of haveing a mis match of fish to begin with so at the moment i'm working my way toawrds a species tank for guppies i currently ahve 20 Guppies 3 Mollies 5 endlers around 10 guppy fry and a Sucking loach (i have read all the bad press on these things but mine is about 3 inches at the moment and is a great community fish at the moment but i'ms till keeping an eye on him)

the insect was exactly the same length as the diameter of an english one pence so pretty damn small, i just noticed him hiding in a plant i have and at first thought it was a deformed fry that was stuck, since i removed that one i have removed another 3, all of them have hidden, in holes in my bogwood and under my bubblewand and in bussy plants.

i haven't recently put anything new into my tank and all the plant and bogwood in there was purchased at my LFS, i am already ahead of you on the ich treatment, the one i had a photo of i decided to see how much it would tolerate before dieing ( really cruel but i want them out of my tank)
This little machine swam happy as larry for over 3 hours in pure King british WS3 ich treatment which as i believe is 10% malachite green,
i removed the bug from the medicine and put it back in a takeaway tub with a lid and tap water and survived a whole night with no heat, very little oxygen and chlorinated water, so i flushed him down the toilet! damn thing had it coming,

so i don't think ich treatments are the way to go, my tank is bordeling 26/27 degrees celcius which is 78.8 - 80.6 F for every one else.


they have not shown any interest in my fish fry (guppy) that i have seen but they are creepy little things and i fear that if they get bigger then they might develop a taste for them.


The only thing i can think that they might be is a later stage of the live bloodworm i used to feed my fish. that has now stopped and i am looking at an alternative live food, i have heard daphnia can carry parasites and i don't fancy culturing things that eat manure, can BBS be kept and grown into ABS easily?



anyways guys thanks for any more help you can offer


Also i'm sure my mollies or even some of the larger guppies would love them, but these things are quicker than my guppy fry, really nippy little bleeders
 
#7 ·
it may sound bad but remove all hiding place from your tank and let your fish go nuts for them thats if they will eat them :)
 
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