Little orange balls... any clue?

[vampie]

I saw a number of these little orange balls on my gravel the other day, can't help but wonder what they are. They are adhesive to the gravel they're on.

I can't seem to take a better picture than the following one, so it probably won't help much.

 

[somethingpishy1]

uhh...i'm pretty sure those are eggs. what kid of fish do you have in your tank?

 

[crimsonmoon]

although i have no clue what kind, the only thing i can think of is for them to be eggs

 

[vampie]

I've crossed out eggs - the only egglaying fish in there is a lone oto.

I'm beginning to wonder if planaria lays eggs..

 

[enrique4jc]

Have to say, they look like eggs to me too.

 

[Hurley]

Are they some kind of strange limpet?

 

[shawnhu]

Planaria does not lay eggs. They divide by splitting in half, and releasing tons of babies.

 

[vampie]

Are they some kind of strange limpet?

No, they're spherical, which my photo clearly doesn't show. Limpets are flat.

Planaria does not lay eggs. They divide by splitting in half, and releasing tons of babies.

I actually am leaning towards planaria eggs now. Apparently they do lay eggs, although they can reproduce asexually as well by splitting themselves, as you mentioned. Unfortunately, I can't find any pictures of their eggs to compare with.

 

[vampie]

Well, here's creepiness defined.

About a week or so back, I put a few river rocks in the tank only to take them back out today because I decided to scape the tank differently. What I found were dozens of these on the bottom of each of those rocks, with planaria crawling all over them. So, the answer, they're planaria eggs.

Here's a (slightly) better picture of what it looks like.

 

[Kashta]

Yuck. Bet you'll use boiling water or bleach on the next batch of rocks you get.

Even so, planaria will disappear if you keep up with water changes and go easy on feeding. Don't get discouraged, it'll be fine.