Copepods

Blinky

Blinky

Gone
Jun 22, 2004
2,995
0
0
51
Toronto, Canada
Visit site
Noticed something teeny moving on the glass in my 10g shrimp tank today. I counted about twenty little critters, about 1/4 the size of a grain of salt (I can barely see them they're so small). They seem to be sticking to the glass, scooting around in little half circles. They look roughly the shape of a tadpole. I did some Googling, and I'm guessing they're copepods, and harmless. Can anyone shed any more light on the situation?

I know copepods are often a sign of an overfed tank, and that's a possiblity even though I try not to feed too much. My shrimp are filter feeders. I feed them a small amount twice a day, crushing their food so it floats suspended in the water for them to 'catch', and it therefore ends up all over the tank. There's never any visible excess food, and the tank is full of red ramshorns to clean up food and plants to soak up nutrients, but it's possible I'm accidentally overfeeding.

[edit] On very close inspection, it appears they have a forked tail and little antennae, they're definitely copepods. With the funny way they dance around, they're actually kinda cute, for a pest :) [/edit]
 
Last edited:
You going to name them all? :p

Sounds neat though. I like when interesting, non-harmful things like that happen. Will your fish eat them? (Oh, wait, is this in your shrimp only tank?) Looks like they've got roommates then, hehe... :D

Maybe you can suck some up in a syringe or turkey baster to feed to your fishies? Unless you'd like to keep them contained to one tank. I don't know anything about them, but I think if I were a fish, those would sound pretty tasty!
 
*laff*
This is eenie, meenie, miny and mo... and their 200 little friends!
I've been reading, and apparantly they're in most tanks but aren't visible unless they're well fed and the population blooms - like algae, they grow given the right (wrong?) conditions. Fish do eat them, and I'm wondering if lots of food plus having no fish in the tank is what's resulted in my bunch of teeny critters.
 
Be careful, Blinky:

comic.jpg


I got that off some site that I can't remember now, when I was researching copepods. I have copepods but mine can only be seen under the microscope.
 
From what I gather copepods are present in all freshwater tanks. I know they are a staple in diet of black ghost knifefish in the wild. Some copepods get up to 20 cm's, most are microscopic. When they get to 20cm's Blinky you might want to ship some up here lol.
 
Nice work. People buy copepods as a food source for their salt/reef tanks.
Do you have such a tank? Harvesting them would be a PITA. :D
 
Copepod is a Genus I believe which contains many species (It's been a while since biology class so feel free to correct me) What you are descibing sound like Planara ( which is a copepod I believe), I have a few and on occasion I have a bunch and then clean my tank better. Last night I saw one that had actually grown to a good 1/2 centimeter maybe more. But usually it's the tiny little fellers on the glass that you see. There are parasitic copepods as well. But I have not had trouble with anything of the sort.

Like many things they are usually in our tanks, but only breed excessively with high organics. So to see an occasional one isn't anything to worry about, but to see a bunch of them indicates the need for some extra vaccuming. With my tank, I often see more of the babies right after a good cleaning, but they generally dissapear within a day or so. If they begin to grow, or I see more than one or two adults, I take it as a sign that I need to be less lazy.
dave
 
I don't think they're planaria, the planaria I've seen look more like worms. They move differently than whatever's in my tank, and are long, thin and white, with triangular heads. These guys are much smaller, and appear oval with a tail that's forked at the end. I really wish I had a microscope!
I'll step up the water changes to twice weekly 50%, hopefully that will help. If I had fish that could dine on these critters I'd try harvesting them, but there aren't really enough for a decent meal :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
AquariaCentral.com
Top Bottom