# What is this thingy????



## jeff63851 (Feb 23, 2005)

Well, I have many cherry shrimps in my aquarium. Unfortunately, I also have some pond snails. When I was going to throw away some Taiwan moss infested with clado., I found some small shrimps along with this thingy. Since it's so small, I used a microscope. Here's a video, (since taking a picture is very hard) it's under the first power of my microscope. It's like the size of a small dot on paper.


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## rain- (Dec 16, 2005)

It's a seed shrimp, Ostracoda, harmless (large quantities might look annoying) and cute thing. Cool video!


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## jeff63851 (Feb 23, 2005)

Wow...thanks for the fast reply! I once had an experiment tank that held duckweed and pond snails. Pretty soon, I found millions of that Ostracoda along with millions of adult pond snails, so I assumed that it was pond snail larva.

If you want, I also uploaded another video...


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## Chris S (Feb 27, 2006)

Certainly entertaining footage haha!


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## rain- (Dec 16, 2005)

I love the videos, it's so great to be able to see the eye and the legs and the creature moving. Thank you for sharing the videos! Here's some more about Ostracods, also some anatomy stuff.

I was just as baffled when I found ostracods in my tank for the first time. It seemed so hard to find information about them. Well, people just aren't usually that interested in the little creatures, the small things are considered as unwanted hitchhikers even though they are usually beneficial to the aquarium. And really pretty when you take a closer look. They are fun and easy pets. 

Oh, and about pond snails. Even the newborn pond snail babies look just like the adults, so they are quite easy to recognise.

Here's a picture of some of my ostracods:


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## turtlehead (Nov 27, 2004)

They are completely harmless, ususally the fish eat them.


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