I have a 40g breeder with assorted plants and high lighting. It has become infested with these little critters. I would post a pic, but they aren't much to look at, just little white dots about the size of a pinhead or smaller that shuffle around pretty slowly. I see them mostly crawling on the driftwood or the side glass, but also free floating in the water as well. Any ideas on how to get rid of them? The tank inhabitants are the plants and a school of rummynose tetras.
Little white crustaceans/copepods.
- Thread starter bob965
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There aren't any fry. There's a decent sized mat of dwarf hairgrass that would serve as a spawning mop if they did decide to breed, but that wasn't really my intent. The critters seem big enough for the adult tetras to notice and/or eat, but they just ignore them.
Might they be planaria? Planaria that I've seen are about 2mm long and glide slowly over surfaces.
They sound like daphnia to me, I had an "infestation" awhile ago, freaked the hell out because I thought they were some sort of parasite. After a bunch of google searches I found that they looked the same as daphina.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphnia
They live off algae and can vary in size a lot, from extremely small to rather large. I ended up with mine after I made the switch to live plants, so I'm assuming that's where they came from. Completely harmless, just a visual annoyance.
If you have an overabundance of them it's possible the dead ones can add to the bioload of your tank. Just keep your substrate crystal clean and get rid of as much algae as you can, and that'll starve them off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphnia
They live off algae and can vary in size a lot, from extremely small to rather large. I ended up with mine after I made the switch to live plants, so I'm assuming that's where they came from. Completely harmless, just a visual annoyance.
If you have an overabundance of them it's possible the dead ones can add to the bioload of your tank. Just keep your substrate crystal clean and get rid of as much algae as you can, and that'll starve them off.
Yeah, that sounds like what they are. It's my first planted tank, so I'm still finding the balance between healthy plants and algae. I'm not too sure if I can do anything about cleaning the substrate, it's covered in plants now so I don't gravel vac this tank. Will fish typically eat them? Cory cats perhaps?