# Bugs !! Newbie Dry Start Need Help !!



## eiketsuburu (Nov 19, 2008)

This will be my first attempt at a dry start tank, everything was has been great since beginning of December, had a bit of algae problem but took care of it, but few days ago i started to notice there are bugs in my dry start and today as i did my daily water spry a ton of them appeared.

Can someone please give me some advice on how to resolve this bug issue, or is this something i can just over look till i flood the tank in a month or so.

Again i am still very new at this, any help would be much appreciated. Thank you in advance.


----------



## Zapins (Jul 28, 2004)

They look like springtails. They don't harm anything as far as I know, I've got them too. I wouldn't worry about them, there is no easy way to kill them off either, they even live on the surface of water in the aquarium. 

Welcome to APC !


----------



## illustrator (Jul 18, 2010)

Indeed springtails, which can be beneficial by eating algae. In any case harmless. Isn't our hobby meant to bring bits of nature (back) into our lives?


----------



## asukawashere (Mar 11, 2009)

Zapins said:


> ... they even live on the surface of water in the aquarium.


Indeed they do, right up until you get a HOB filter or spray bar that knocks them into the water, where your fish will greedily eat them up.


----------



## Zapins (Jul 28, 2004)

poor springtails.


----------



## eiketsuburu (Nov 19, 2008)

Zapins, illustrator and asukawashere thank you guys for identifying the bugs for me and the advice, i seriously hope these guys don't get out of the tank.

I have a 50 gallon tank and will be using a canister filter instead of a HOB, i hope after i flood the tank the jets from the outlet will take care of them.

Thanks again. 

Below is a recent pic (1 month and 1 1/2 week)


----------



## cstmgp (Aug 22, 2007)

Definitely spring tails. They won't escape as they need the moist conditions to survive.
If you want to make some extra tank money, catch those bad boys and sell cultures of them over on dendroboard. They bring a pretty good price.

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2


----------



## Zapins (Jul 28, 2004)

From what I've seen none of my tanks ever really gets rid of them. They always seem to find a calm part of the tank to lurk about.


----------



## asukawashere (Mar 11, 2009)

I don't know; I managed to eradicate them from my 55g molly tank last summer—had tons of them back when there was some Salvinia in there for them to cling to. I pulled the floaters, increased the surface agitation, and the mollies took care of the rest.  Haven't seen them in there since.


----------



## Method (Aug 18, 2011)

Just think of them as part of your clean-up crew. By the way, that must be a super-macro lens to take pics of collembola and make them look so big!


----------

