# Insect Identification & Eradication?



## xfile80303 (Mar 29, 2007)

Hi all,

While moving our 10g Celestial Pearl Danio breeding tank last night my wife and I noticed one of the "stray pieces of Java Moss" swimming. It was kind of like that scene in Aliens when the Marines are exploring the seemingly empty lair and all of a sudden the "wall" moves behind them.

We used a baster to capture it. I spotted another one after re-locating the tank, and we sucked it out too... I'm afraid there may be others, lurking.

My wife looked it up online, and we think they are damselfly larvae:

http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/art-19373

Here are some pictures of the two we extracted:
 



If that's what these are, these nasties are predators which are probably responsible for the sharp decline in our red cherry shrimp in the tank, as well as the confounding lack of Celestial Pearl Danio eggs/fry.

We suspect these came along with some Java Moss or cabomba that we bought at or local fish store somehow. The only other thing we have put in the tank is a piece of African root which was dry at the time we purchased it.

We are prepared to take the tank all the way down, scrub it out, dump the plants, substrate, etc. to get rid of these, but if we can avoid the trauma to our Pearls we are wide eyed and open eared for any and all advice you can provide to fully eradicate these invaders.

Sincerely,

Levi
P.S. We did take a short movie of one of them swimming if that will help identification.


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## DonaldmBoyer (Aug 18, 2005)

Levi,

I am sorry to hear that. I wouldn't break down your tank, though. There is no concrete way to get rid of these guys other than to let nature run its course, and have them turn into flies at which time they'll just leave the tank anyhow. Keep looking, and get rid of them with a turkey baster. I can't imagine that there would be too many in there.

You could adjust the water temp, but if you get it too high, you are just going to kill your shrimp and fish along with the nymphs.

Manual removal is the best way to rid of these dudes!


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## xfile80303 (Mar 29, 2007)

Thanks donaldmboyer. These are really sinister little bugs... We'll keep looking for them and remove them as you suggest. Just thinking about them in there with our pearls gives me the creeps though...

We've kept the two we removed in a jar, in case we needed them for identification reasons. Last night we decided we didn't need to keep them around anymore and figured we would "recycle" them by putting them in our 55g with our angels, and other "bigger" fish which should make a nice snack out of them. When we looked at the jar again, the larger of the two had eaten about half of the smaller one, headfirst, and still had the latter half sticking out. We dropped them into our 55g tank and immediately one of our fish "stole" the remaining half of the smaller one. The large one was lightning fast (so much for the online descriptions of them being slow swimmers) and swam away to hide anywhere it could. Long story short, this guy was _very_ good with its natural defenses and knew how to play dead and how to hide...:boxing: ultimately one of our columbian tetras did the deed, however.

The idea that these two (and maybe more) had been in our tank, and potentially eating our shrimp and pearl babies made me feel no remorse for the little "circle of life" described above...

Levi


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## benjavan (Dec 10, 2006)

Definately Damsel fly nymphs. Great job with the pictures of them. How big are they right now?


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## DonaldmBoyer (Aug 18, 2005)

Well, Levi, at least you can take satisfaction knowing that your Angels and tetras have been fed nicely!


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## xfile80303 (Mar 29, 2007)

benjavan, before we "recycled" them, the larger one was about an inch long, and the smaller one was about 3/4 of an inch long.

Thanks about the pictures... that's my wife running the camera , I just adjusted levels in Photoshop 

Cheers,

Levi


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## benjavan (Dec 10, 2006)

If they are what I think they are, at that size, if you raise the temp about 5 degrees, you should get a hatch. As long as you dont keep your galaxys to warm right now, they should handle the change okay.


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## Muirner (Jan 9, 2007)

Ok, so did you end up finding more of these creatures. I have one in a quarentine right infront of me right now, and i'm so tempted to feed it to my DP, but i dont want her to be hurt by it. And no it will not make it to the stage of becomming a fly. I dont want flys in my tank and that's all i'm saying about that. Where do these come from and why?


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## furballi (Feb 2, 2007)

Move a few larger fish into the tank infected with the larvae. That's the quickest way to control these guys. They usually come in via new plants, or an open top tank.


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## xfile80303 (Mar 29, 2007)

Evil, aren't they?

We haven't found any more, but I'm still paranoid there may be others in there... The two we found were only discovered after a significant disruption to the tank (we took out most of the water to move it to another location). There's no telling how long they had been in there to get as big as they did. There seems to be a large window of time which they can stay in this form, based off of environmental conditions, so it could have been a couple of weeks, to several months.

The tank we found them in has a pretty large quantity of java moss in it (trying to spawn our Celestial Pearl Danios) so they could easily be hiding in there still.

As for feeding it to fish... I doubt it would hurt your fish, but they do have some pretty amazing defense techniques which you should be aware of. They can swim really fast when they need to, are very good at hiding, and play dead very well. We had to carefully watch the one we put in our large tank and dig it out of several hiding places, and make it swim around so the fish would take notice. Eventually the fish figured it out and made it a meal, but it took some time. If you do feed it to your fish, I'd recommend you stand guard so it doesn't take up residence in the tank.

As for where they come from... that's a great question. I'm fairly certain ours came in with either the java moss or some cabomba that must have been grown where these buggers could lay eggs in the water. The only other thing we put in the tank was a piece of African root, but it has been in there for a long time before we added the plants so I doubt it is the culprit.

Best of luck...

Levi


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## Muirner (Jan 9, 2007)

Thanks Levi for all your help. I'm paranoid that there are others in there as well. I'd love to move a few larger fish into my tank, but the thing is this tank (hopefully) will house RCS in the near future, and i cant have an angelfish swimming around picking off shrimplets.

The thing is i pulled this thing out of the java moss while pulling hair algae from it. I got a good clump and look down and sure as crap there is this little thing jetting around my driftwood. I caught it and isolated it. Now it's dead. I was going to see if my puffer wanted it but the thing is longer then my puffer haha. So i threw it outside. Off to lay and look for more.


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## xfile80303 (Mar 29, 2007)

Sounds like you had a pretty big one... ours were approximately an inch long. We are in the same boat you are, and unable to move any of our larger fish in there, as tempting as it is. This tank is home to our celestial pearl danois who are just too small and precious to try to co-habitate with some of our bigger fish.

This episode has certainly made me think that the next time I get plants from an "unknown" source (such as the local fish store, or online) that I do the 1/19th bleach dip treatment on them before they make it into a tank for real.

Please let me know if you come up with a way to find these things (a trap of some kind?) as I catch myself staring into the tank for minutes at a time, jumping at any movement that's not a fish.

Cheers,

Levi


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## Muirner (Jan 9, 2007)

I find my self peering at every single piece of moss waiting to see another. I must say that mine was about 1" long as well, but my puffer is a dwarf, and she's only about 3/4 of an inch and unlike most puffers dosent have a big "tooth" so i dont want the lil fisty thing to do something bad to her. (am i super parinoid or ??)

Let me ask, how much did you pay for your celestial pearl danios? Those are a beautiful looking fish. Can you tell me some more about them? I'm looking for another fish to go into my 55 gal. with rasboras and that fish is great looking.


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## xfile80303 (Mar 29, 2007)

I certainly agree, there's something sinister about these nasties... I don't think you're paranoid.

As for the celestial pearls... We bought ours at our local fish store right at the time they were introduced, and not knowing anything about them... they just stole our hearts. I think we paid about $8(US) each for them. I would caution you, however, to only buy from a captive bread batch since the immense popularity of these new fish has devastated their natural habitat. The best source of information I have found for them is the forum topic on petfrd:

http://petfrd.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20442

There are also a couple very good articles on practical fishkeeping's site:

http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/pages/item.php?news=1060
and
http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/pages/item.php?news=1197

(you may have to register (for free) to see the articles)

Cheers,

Levi


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## xfile80303 (Mar 29, 2007)

Well, it happened again.

Last night my wife was looking in our 38 gallon planted tank, admiring the red cherry shrimp and the playful ottos when she said "uh oh!"

My heart immediately drops whenever she does that...

She pointed and I immediately recognized the unmistakable tail (gill) assembly of two damsel fly larvae, standing on the substrate. Ah!!

This is a completely different tank, with _nothing_ in common with the other tank we found them in. These must have come from the first batch of plants (see my post) and just recently hatched (?) or we just recently found them.

Does anyone know more information about these buggers? These that we found last night were not as developed as the ones we found in our other tank, but they were still pretty big (almost an inch long, with heads that didn't quite measure up to the larger one we found previously). How big are they when they hatch? How fast do they grow, what do the eggs look like, etc.?

No more pictures... we caught them easily with a baster and gave them to our large tank... two columbian tetras made a quick snack out of them almost instantly.

So, of course, now I'm twice as paranoid that there are others in _both_ tanks!

<sigh>

Levi


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## Muirner (Jan 9, 2007)

Levi - I saw that this thread was the most recently posted one in this section when i was looking on the main page. And right when i saw it, my first thoughts were "uh oh" These damselflys give me the goosebumps, they are really nasty little buggers. 

IDK where mine came from, my tank is newer and recently set up (a hand full of months now) and i'll tell ya what, these things came from somewhere and it makes me mad. But to date i've been looking online for information about them, and there is no real details about them. I dont want these creepy critters in my tank. I'll be looking for more today while i'm scraping algae, and replanting.


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## bigtroutz (Nov 17, 2006)

xfile80303 said:


> Well, it happened again.
> 
> Last night my wife was looking in our 38 gallon planted tank, admiring the red cherry shrimp and the playful ottos when she said "uh oh!"
> 
> ...


You should be paranoid - I have no doubt that they will eat your shrimp, at least the smaller ones and will eat anything they can catch and hold. They feed by lying in wait and then ambush prey by extending their specially adapted mouthpart which seize and hold their prey while the remaining mouthparts tear the prey apart. muhahaha








Typically, they have a one year life cycle, but this varies alot by species if not habitat. Their eggs look like, well, eggs of all other insects pretty much, and are often inserted into the stems or are deposited on the stems/leaves of aquatic plants (which is probably how you got them).

This is the most complete reference I could find after a quick look on the web:
http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Zygoptera.html

My guess is that you obtained plants which had been raised outdoors in ideal damselfly habitat.

Even if you had treated the plants with bleach or permangenate, if the eggs had been inserted into the stems, the treatment would have not been effective.

I would guess that the only way to remove them from a tank with shrimp also present is to do it manually - any chemical designed to kill insects will likely also kill the shrimp.

The good news is that once they emerge from the tank, they are unlikely to return unless you let them flit around the house for a couple of weeks, hehe.

PS 
the eggs are tiny, the initial larval stages are also tiny (like 1-2 mm)- so you have probably had them for a long time and not known it OR they came in partially grown on the plants. At the temperatures we keep our tanks at, they will grow pretty fast if enough food is present, eg reach full size in about 3-5 months. You can tell how close to their transition to the winged stage they are by the development of the larval wing cases, which are on the back of the last 2 body segments with legs. In the last few days before they crawl out of the water, the wing cases will turn black and the folding of the wings inside becomes quite visible. Full grown larvae/nymphs are typically about an inch to 1.5 inches in length, not including the gills. Let me know if you have more questions, and I will try to answer.


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## NEKvt (Apr 14, 2007)

One of my favorite hatches to fly fish in the west is damselflies, that being said I would not want them in my fish tank. Smaller than they are + prey. Check out the Belastomatidae if you want to see some real scary water bugs, and be thankful you only have damsels.



bigtroutz said:


> My guess is that you obtained plants which had been raised outdoors in ideal damselfly habitat.


If this is the case, and that location happens to be a different part of the globe, be heads up about these bugs hatching from your aquarium, your one could turn into many and exotics are not something we need. Accidental aquarium releases give the hobby a bad rap. <----- this is definately a bit paranoid but there are many examples, just check out the species assemblages in Florida for a few.


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## Muirner (Jan 9, 2007)

So I was checking on how my Bylaxa was growing out of the water, and i found a mostly ready to fly damselfly i think. I took about 10 pictures, and I'll try to post some later on. But what the heck. Between these and planeria I dont know what to do with myself. Hopefully this is an isolated problem to these 2 damselfly's although i have read that they can stay underwater as long as they want before becomming winged. Makes me want to get my Koi Angel back, and put it in this tank. That'd be the last damselfly in here.


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