General Care Discussion :: Something in my tank??

[Kayra33]

I was cleaning the bottom of my tank last night, just removing the excess junk off of the bottom so I took out all of the plants and rinsed them and let them sit on my counter until I was done cleaning. After I was finished I noticed some snails on the paper towl that I had the plants on. Along with the snails were some kind of creature that definitely wanted to get back in water but I have no idea what it was. It kind of looked like a little shrimp but I don't think that it was, it kind of had a clear color to it?? Can anyone help me out

[jenaero]

Did it look like this?



Sounds like a ghost shrimp hitched a ride on the plants
What'd you end up doing with it?

[Kayra33]

No, they really didn't have any color.....they had antennas but almost like it had no front legs or anything and just kind of squirmed along. And it definitely had to come on the plants b/c I don't feed her anything live. The snails came from my plants but they are almost all gone since I read that I should remove all gravel. I've never seen anything like it and I couldn't see them in the tank swimming, just clinging to the plants after I washed them. I threw the snails and whatever else away.....

[sillyleisl]

Ghost shrimp (like the one in the pic), don't have a color when you see them in person either. The light is reflected just so in that shot to give an outline to the body...otherwise you'd be looking at pic of nothing! LOL

[Kayra33]

But whatever they were they were really small, almost as small as the tiny black snails I just didn't want it to be something foreign to the turtle and gross in her tank

[DavidY]

Could it be daphnia? kind of like this...


I think it's cool to have little planktonic creatures as part of the captive ecosystem, but unfortunately too many freshwater plankton are either parasitic or some sort of flying insect larvae which will grow to something big and ugly and fly around the house. But daphnia are one of the harmless ones that are good for food for fish larvae if you can get them to breed.

[Kayra33]

Yeah, it sort of resembles that. I think that I mentioned that it kind of squirmed around like it had no back legs Kind of weird I thought and I didn't see a whole lot of them, only like 2 or 3 but I was just worried that it might be harmful. I clean the water often as with the warm weather here in PA right now it started turning green. So I changed the whole thing and then added more water, still looked greenish so I did another partial and it has been a lot better. How would I get rid of them? I love having the aquatic plants but they seem to bring on so many unwanted creatures. Really all I want in my tank is Brooks Should I get some rosy red minnows for Brooks and will they eat the daphnia? See, I just had an expedition with parasites thinking that it was from the snails and I took Brooks to the vet and they gave me a shot for her and she seems to be ok so I really don't want her to get parasites again......Any suggestions

[DavidY]

I think if you add some fish to the tank that they will take care of your unwanted visitors.

[Safdar]

Haha ya fish will destroy the intruders

[Kayra33]

So Friday I went to the pet store and bought a couple of rosy red minnows for Brooks and some more anchoris. Needless to say she has 1 minnow left and no anchoris I plan on getting more rosy red's but they were almost all out and she told me to come back this week if I wanted more. I feel bad for the little guys but I know that it's all a part of the circle of life. It looks pretty cool in my tank now I added some ornaments so the fish could hide if they wanted too but Brooks just loves to flip all of them upside down and bite them. I also added my 3rd bubble wand in less than a month and she's already almost destroyed that one. It only took a day

[sillyleisl]

I went to a koi pond place because I had some different unwanted visitors in my pond. The guy thought I was describing mosquito larvae so he said that some fish would help but I said my turtle would eat them for sure. He suggested flagfish because he said they were pretty fast. I bought two and they're still there. Just a suggestions if you want to try another kind of fish.

[Kayra33]

Thanks for the suggestion, maybe I'll see if we have those around here

[Tenodera]

oooh they're really pretty