It ate my fry!

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K

Kin Corvida

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Oct 9, 2006
30
2
0
S.E.A
Bought a packet of Ghost Shrimp to feed off the algae in my tank, and i think i got a little stowaway...

Frankly, it looked like a little alien, being all chummy with the shrimp, it's about 1cm in length, has mean looking eyes, like a praying mantis, and a thorny rear. Six legs point everywhere and it's a algae-shade of green.

It looked predatory, so i chucked it into a spare container and popped a guppy fry in there just to see what would happen... Just as the little one passed by its face... ZAP! The wee thing was caught in the alien's jaws! It then proceeded to munch the life out of the fry and finished everything...

Felt kinda sad to watch the fish get eaten but that's nature for you... Did some research and my suspicions were confirmed, it's a Dragonfly Nymph.

So after its little exhibition, i didn't feel it was safe to pop the little rascal into my tank and have decided to keep it in a separate container. What i'm asking here is, how long can they live in the nymph-stage (I couldn't get a good answer during the online search) and what's an alternative source of food to guppy fry?


Kin
 
Have taken some pictures of the mini-monster so everyone can see what a little terror it is... :D
Its hiding under the leaf, a bad substitute for an aquatic plant i know, but its all i have at the moment...
A_D'gonfly Nymph (1).jpg


A wee guppy fry swims around the nymph, blissfully unaware of the death it can bring...
A_D'gonfly Nymph (3).jpg

Seeing the japanese words under the tank makes it seem like the bug came out from one of their sci-fi series, hence i shall name the little terror: Godzilla...


Kin
 
Little fish killer. At least they don't run around your house, darting for cover when the lights come on...like a centipede! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
 
I doubt it will stay a nymph for too long, most insects don't live even a year. There has got to be some info on it somewhere, try some florida colleges' websites. UF most likely.

Unless it already changed. we catch some things that look like that in florida that aren't dragonfly larvae. they call them water scorpions, we also have the giant water bugs that eat fry and smaller mnniow, oh and water spiders. So you can imagine any collecting trip has at least an hour of making sure we don't put any little nasties in our tank or pond. unless the fish inside are a bit more dangerous to the bugs of course.

Wonder how that got in with the shrimp.
 
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