Weird things on my glass (little plankton like creatures)

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Rafini

Rafini

Piranha
MFK Member
Jun 28, 2012
1,930
178
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Calgary, Canada
For obvious reasons I can't get a picture of them as they are about 2mm in size. As far as I can make out there are 3 kinds. The small ones with long tails, the larger ones with 2 balls towards the end of them and small tails. and today for the first time I can see longer types.

I only started noticing them recently. The tank is kept clean and all the fish have been eating well and growing very nicely. The only fish in there are 2 bichirs, a datnoid and a irwini catfish. they are all currently growing out. I see things like this all the time in my marine set up and I know they are just a normal part of the marine ecosystem. the thing is I have no clue if they are a normal part of the freshwater aquarium, or if they are unwanted pests.

I know that it IS possible that the bichirs were wild caught and may have introduced them to the tank. I have a Ornate and a Delhezi both were introduced to the tank around 2".

My paint art skills are less than good but this is what they look like
the whiskers are antennae on the front
Oz6gV.png


Not sure if this is related, but I seem to have a few greyish coloured snails in the tank that seem to have been breeding recently ( i have clumps of seethrough jelly like balls placed around with white dots growing inside. This doesnt bother me as I know my Irwini catfish hunts snails in the wild so it will be nice for him to kill them. I just wanted to bring up the snails incase they were somehow related.

I need to know how to get rid of these if they are bad or if not then thats fine.
 
OH, okay that makes sense, you see it is a grow out tank that I feed multiple times a day. are they harmless to my fish?

Also wondering if there is anything I could get to eat them? to keep them in check, I just did a huge waterchange the other day and only noticed them since.
 
Just did a big water change, I let my change schedule become more lapse recently and I'll have to do it a lot more to keep these things from coming back
 
definitely cyclops. i see them often when dipnetting ponds and such. theyre harmless and are actually sold as fish food in some places
 
Wow really? that is definately them. How the hell did they manage to establish a colony in my tank? nothing seems to be eating them though
 
It could have been a lot of things, such as cross contamination from a net or transferring of water from an already infested tank.
 
If its the color of what u feed them then yeah planara, I sometimes get small white ones if I miss small pieces of talapia when I do a wc. I vac it all out do a wc and scrub glass and gone.



Go S. Vettel #1 rb8
 
They are cyclops, completely identical to that wikipedia picture. there are a few smaller wormy things too that I assume are Planara.
I'm going to maintain the tank a lot better and feed less to reduce the number of Planara. as long as they aren't dangerous to my fish I don't mind them being there. but I will destroy their numbers with lots of waterchanges
 
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