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I have been having an issue with my aqua clear filter for the last couple weeks. It had a hairline crack in it causing it to leak a good 5 gallons onto my floor over the course of two weeks. The only reason I found the leak was because I noticed my water level decreased dramatically. The last couple of weeks have been hectic for me and my roommates have been feeding my tank... over feeding that is. I can tell because there has been a spike in algae growth in my tank as well. SO onto the BUGS.... I am taking my tank apart this morning and what I notice in the algae that is growing at the level of the water is small brown specs moving about in the algae. A closer look proved that they are not just specs but tiny little spidery looking things. I took my glass cleaning stick (with the little sponge at the end) and scrubbed them off and lo and behold they all floated to the top and JUMPED back onto the glass from the water.... So now what I have is a spotless glass with spidery insects crawling about... Has anyone else seen such a thing??

Pezgurl

Could well be hexapodia springtails, they are some of the most numerous creatures on earth, and some of them are semi-aquatic. Hydropodura aquatica and Isotoma palustris are the particular species that come to mind.They pretty much just scavenge detritus and to them the algae'd rim around the top of a fishtank is a good place to browse.

Post a piccie if you can, for a more positive identification.

Hi,
If these are what LHD thinks they are then along with being
a shock and a pest, they are great fish food, especially
for surface feeders like hatchets.
Frank


-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

Springtails - Order Collembola.

Here is a basic introduction to these creatures.

The vast majority of these tiny creatures (many are no more than 2mm long) are, as LongHairedGit (I still feel ridiculous at times using this name in a polite post!) explained above, detritivores that are part of the important chain of organisms responsible for the breakdown of POM - Particulate Organic Matter. POM consists basically of dead leaf tissue, small particles of uneaten food left by other creatures, excretory products of other small creatures such as insects, basically any small piece of material that has either been part of a living organism or passed through the gut of one at some stage is a constituent of POM. Organisms that process POM and break it down into ever smaller pieces (Springtails included) are vital parts of the ecology of the world, for without them, POM would take far longer for bacteria to decompose and turn into simple organic compounds and mineral compounds that become available for plants. These organisms include a vast array of small animals including such creatures as Caddis Fly larvae, various Mites, the aforementioned Springtails, and non-animal organisms such as fungi. Ultimately, their ecological role is to reduce the size of the particles (and in some cases change their composition) so that the particles become more amenable to bacterial action. Without them, life on earth would be a lot less diverse.

Springtails get their name (as illustrated on that page I linked above) from a special organ attached to the abdomen, known as the furcula, which is usually locked in place. However, if the animal feels the need to make a quick getaway from a potential predator, it can unlock the furcula, which then snaps open on a hinged joint at high speed, and in doing so, pushes the Springtail away from the ground and propels it into the air. They will do this if approached closely, so one way to tell if your organisms ARE indeed Springtails is to wave a pencil in front of them and see if they 'hop'. If they do, they will do so at such speed that you will find yourself mentally inserting a 'boing' sound as you watch them!

Since Springtails are enormously abundant in the soils of the temperate and subtropical regions of the world, your chances of avoiding them are actually nil. Uusually, if any are brought into the home on shoes, they don't last long unless your home contains somewhere that they can colonise - the soil in which you are growing houseplants for example, where they will set to helping to break up peat detritus in your compost and thus assisting the bacterial breakdown of your houseplant compost. There are a few pest species that will attack living matter, but these are a minority among the Springtails, most are inoffensive and useful processors of muck, basically.

If they find your aquarium, here too they can make a living. They can do this because they are usually small enough to be able to walk on the water, using the surface tension of the water surface to keep them afloat. A creature that is just 2mm long will have no trouble whatsoever harnessing surface tension in this manner, indeed to a Springtail, the surface of your aquarium's water possesses from its point of view many of the properties that you would associate with a bouncy castle!

Apart from finding food around the edges of the aquarium, they are quite capable of feeding upon odd scraps of missed and uneaten fish food that manage to stay upon the surface untouched by fishes. They can usually escape being consumed by surface feeding fishes (unless the fishes are very quick courtesy of their built in 'ejector seat', but some fishes will manage to catch a percentage of those Springtails that walk upon the water.

If you want to examine a live Springtail under the microscope, you have to be very nimble at catching them. Dead ones, on the other hand, can be examined at leisure. They are droll little creatures, and chances are that you will be unable to identify them even to Family level unaided, as their taxonomy is definitely a specialist subject. Finding out exactly which species of Springtail you have, if indeed you do have Springtails (their 'ejector seat' escape from your clutches will be an immediate giveaway) is a task for the specialist invertebrate zoologist, assuming of course that you are capable of catching them and sealing them in a container prior to taking them along for identification.

You can find out a LOT about these creatures here.



Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002