little creatures swimming in my filter

[jagger]

I came to clean out my eheim filter, and i found these "little things" swimming around in the sponges. they were almost see thru , and seem to be running around in the canister..

can anyone tell me what they are??? and if they are bad for the fish, and how to get rid of them ,or should i keep them


thank you in advance

[wetmanNY]

Pour some into a white saucer and peer at it with a magnifying glass and give us a good description and we can probably tell what kind of critter it is.

Going to be harmless, so rest easy...

[jagger]

they look see thru ,but with some grey(there guts is what we see) in them, there shape is like an egg , more stretched out.
they seem to be running on the bottom of the bowl that i put them in but i don't see legs.

someone told me that it's from over feeding my fish . can that be true>>

[kveeti]

Everybody has little critters in their tank, mostly they just can't be seen. They might be in over-abundance because you have overfed, but they would probably be there nonetheless. However, you wouldn't notice just a few.

After wetmanNY once mentioned about a microscope, I obsessed until I bought myself one. It's fascinating!

Try and match your critter up at one of the following sites.... but it's really hard, I don't have names for most of mine, yet. If it doesn't have legs, it could be a protozoa of some type. (Although thinking of this much later, are there protozoa you can see with the naked eye?)

http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/pond/index.html
http://www.micrographia.com/
http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/moviegallery/pondscum.html

[Tom.E]

Ostracods run around on substrates when they’re not swimming, and they can live in some pretty atrocious conditions.

Kveeti- crustaceans and algae aside, you might want to buy the book ‘Free-Living Freshwater Protozoa’ by D.J. Patterson for IDing your protozoans. It’s current and has color photos and illustrations of each protozoan subject. A bit pricey but very easy to use and a good book to have next to a microscope.


Tom

[kveeti]

Tom.E - Thank you. I looked the book up on Amazon.ca - it looks like something I'd love, but a bit pricey is right. Costs more than my microscope - I didn't get an expensive one, but it hooks up to the computer so I can take pictures and make movies of my critters. I'll just have to start saving yet again.

[Cichlid Woman]

See-through, except for grayish abdomens ... no legs ... are they FRY?!

-- Pat

[wetmanNY]

The only single-celled protist I've ever seen is-- Ichthyophthirius multifiliis! C'mon you guys knew it was Ich! It's the largest ciliate, --is it? Or just the largest ciliate fish parasite: a less glamorous title.

There are some huge amoebas you could just make out, too, on the right surface, with the right lighting..

But jagger, you've eliminated flatworms. Does this critter seem like it has a transparent shell, and does it have jointed legs or antennas? I'm stumped here, though.Tom E.'s ostracod suggestion is good: are they scooting, bouncing, zipping like crazy?

[MrGoodbytes]

I had something like this once or twice. I didn't identify them, but they were small things, like these. They lived in some algal turf in one of my aquariums, but I did nothig, cause I thought the fish could have a snack. They were gone 6 hours later.

[jagger]

wetmanNY, yes they are they scooting, bouncing, zipping like crazy, but there is no shell they pransparent


what are flat worms???...........i was cleaning a 10 gal which is full of plants and no fish........i noticed under some algae some worm like things that didn't move too much.....is that flat worms, and are they dangerous

[wetmanNY]

jagger, follow kveeti's links a couple of posts up. Much better than anything we can tell you without photos. You'll see some beautiful micropix.

There are some links to information about freshwater invertebrates at www.skepticalaquarist.com All these dritters are natural: food for small fish: not parasites. One exception might be a small fish leech. Unlikely. The leeches that turn up in our aquaria are mostly attacking invertebrates. Some gouramis will eat 'em.