Bugs in my tank and my shrimp ain't well

i tried to do some forum searches on this one but couldn't figure out good search terms to get me where i need to be.

ok, so i've got some odd bugs in my tank. they are about 2mm long and look like really tiny baby pond snails but they RUN around the bottom of the tank like land bugs - about as fast as an ant. i can't get my camera to focus on something that small. they seem white/clear with dark lines running down the length of their...shell? exoskeleton?...and they seem to hang out on the sandy bottom - no wall running.

what the heck? any clues?

also, my ghost shrimp are suddenly kicking the bucket after about 4 months of health. and they're dying kinda slowly...i keep finding these white shrimp that i assume are carcasses upside down and stuck to plants, but when i try to get in there to remove the bodies they panic and jump...but only to land on their backs like turtles, waving their little arms around....its really sad, even thought they were all of 40cents each. everyone else in the tank seems fine - i do have a bit of a brown algae problem right now, but only because the sun keeps getting through (thanks to cats pulling the shades aside when i'm not looking...they're helpful.) I did add 2 algae eating shrimp about 2 weeks ago...could they be the reason for the GS demise?

anyway, help me out if you have insight!
thanks

FishyMatty said:

the bugs actually have little legs and shells? what kind of algae eating shrimp did you buy? the dead shrimp your finding are they clear/white or pink? clear/white is the shell and pink is the dead shrimp. I you have added any kind of algae fix or destroyer anything that kill algae that will kill shrimp.

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well, i don't know if they have legs - they are so small - but they move like they have legs. they scurry, stop, turn, speed up and slow down, and i think i saw one moving grains of sand around, so i think that legs are there. Their body looks pretty shell covered, but i'm not going to say that it isn't more of an exoskeleton. they look bigger than the pictures of the micro-organisms present in a FW tank.

the algae eating shrimp look like amanos to me, but they were just listed as "algae eating shrimp" (i live 2 blocks away from "Little Amazon" in seattle...dangerous distance from a pet store...what was i thinking?.) they are about the size of my ghost shrimp but with a curve to their body, where i think of ghost shrimp as having a "hunchback" where their body bends in the middle. the algae shrimp are not quite see through, but not really white, with dots all the way down their tails. when one comes out today i'll try to get a pic of it.

the dying shrimp are turning white, and many of my ghost shrimp have molted - its nothing like that. they look really dead but when i touch them they freak out and then jump away, but its like they only have the energy for the one jump to freedom and then go back to hardly being able to move at all. i have already taken one out today and put it out of it's (assumed) misery and i'm currently trying to get the other one out of the plants so i can remove it without tearing apart the tank. There isn't any pinkness to them though.

i try to stay away from chemically fixing anything in the tank, so i'm attempting to kill the algae by just giving the plants good growing conditions to out-compete the algae. it doesn't seem to be getting rid of the algae, but it has kept it from getting worse. so it shouldn't be a chemical in there. one new thing i did start to add recently(on the recommendation of my LFS) is VitaChem (boyd enterprises?) fish nutritient supplement. My snails keep growing poor shells and this was recommended because it would increase the calcium available - although i don't see any calcium source on the ingredient listing. idunno.

*whew*

ok...so looking around online makes me think its some sort of isopod...it looked, oddly enough, like one of those giant isopods they are finding on the ocean floor, except instead of being as big as a dinner plate mine are around 2mm long.
most of the isopod info i'm finding is about the giant isopods, reef isopods, or just a taxinomic discussion of where on the evolutionary chart isopods can be found.

about a week or so ago my betta who was in that tank suddenly died. he suddenly got hugely bloated, after which he was moved to the hospital tank, where his fins rapidly started dissolving and falling off and he turned from brilliant red to white and green. it was pretty horrible. no one else in the original tank seemed/seems affected though. these websites about isopods that i'm visiting do show that some are parasitic in nature but some aren't worth worrying about. so i'm worried - are freshwater isopods commonly parasitic? could they be causing the shrimp deaths and the betta death?

anyone with astounding isopod knowhow?

thanks so much for the imput so far...i feel smarter already!

i don't think so...my set-up isn't really suitable. i don't have a sponge over my filter intake and these little "running snails" or whatever don't look like anything even remotely resembling baby shrimpness. from what i understand shrimp fry are free swimming. my bugs look like potato bugs that go fast and with no visible section divides.

that said, i've never really seen shrimp fry. i'm just going off of what i remember reading.

i thought fish tanks were supposed to relax you!
this is like studying for a final!