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This weekend I added a pair of Apistogramma bitaeniata tefe to my tank, with also has a couple of fry breeding traps with platy fry. I have never noticed this before, but tonight I see on my water surface small red/brown specks that can jump. At first I thought it was small pieces of uneaten food, until I saw them jump.

Thanks for any advice.

Cheers
TW

I noticed this with my aquarium a couple of weeks ago as well! I did my water change today and didn't see any present.

They seemed to jump onto the sides of the tank as the water level dropped.

Hopefully they are not harmful.

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Those who say they cant, Never will !!!

How big are these "specs"?

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As a size comparison, I have a container of small pellets for fry or small fish. They would be as small as that & a reddish colour. However, I don't see these jumping bugs today.

In any case, if your able to help with what they are, I'd appreciate it very much.

Thanks,


Cheers
TW

The little jumpers are hypogastrurid springtail or simply "springtails". The following is from: http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/ent/clinic/Bugofwk/970003/springta.htm

Springtails are small, primitive, and wingless insects. Most of the world's 6000+ species are 0.25 - 6.0 mm long, but 10.0 mm has been reported. What they lack in size they make up for in numbers, with populations in optimal habitats approaching 100,000 per square meter, making them the most abundant group of insects in those areas.

The name springtail comes from a unique structure on the underside of the abdomen called the furcula, which many species possess. The springlike action of the furcula enables those species to jump when disturbed, giving rise to other common names for some species: garden fleas and snow fleas. Species with a reduced or absent furcula simply crawl over or through their habitat.

Springtails are usually found in damp situations. Soil, leaf litter, decaying wood, fungi, mosses, caves, shorelines (freshwater and marine), and even the surface of water are habitats for many species. Some can be found arboreally on vegetation, and some can be found out and about in the winter, on rocks and snow. Some of these winter (also alpine and arctic) species may aggregate and form visible masses, or their abundance may give a "tint" to snow and other substrates.

Most springtails feed on decaying vegetation or on bacteria, fungi, algae, pollen, and other forms of organic material. A few are even predators. Most cause little or no economic damage, but a few are pests on vegetation, in greenhouses, in mushroom cultures, in fishworm beds, and in buckets for collecting maple sap. Others may be a nuisance by living in the soil of houseplants or entering homes in the summer. Overall, in their roles as scavengers and prey, they are an important but largely unseen component of many ecosystems.

If you feel overpopulated, use a wet vac to suck the little guys off the surface then clean the vacuum outside. I use my python to suck them under and down the drain...



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"To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research."
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Springtails! I've had those in the past ...

Springtails are primitive insects (Order Collembola) that are more usually found eking out a living as detritivores in soil. However, their small size means that they are capable of 'walking on water', taking advantage of the fact that their tiny mass is insufficient to break the surface tension of a volume of water. Their ability to 'jump' arises from an interesting mechanism that allows them to propel themselves away from enemies - a structure that looks a little like an arrester hook on a carrier-borne aircraft is hinged under the abdomen, and under normal circumstances is locked into place by a locking mechanism on the underside. This is in tension with a muscle attached to the abdomen, and when the lock is released, the muscle in tension snaps the 'arrester hook' out from under the abdomen to a position pointing behind the animal. This propels the animal a distance many times its own body length. It's amusing to watch, and you cannot help but mentally dub a 'boing' sound onto the action as you watch it!

Springtails on the aquarium surface make a living by feeding on excess food. If you have floating plants, and food becomes trapped mong them, then Springtails will enjoy the resulting feast. Because they are so tiny, Springtails only need tiny amounts of food, and they perform a limited if useful service by announcing to the aquarist that he or she is being somewhat generous with the food.

Because they can 'walk on water', they're capable of sitting there and eking out an opportunistic living on your fish food once they arrive. You can't really escape from them, because there are millions of them in the average square metre of lawn or garden, and any that find themselves transported into your house on the soles of your shoes will set about making a living in household dust alongside dust mites, and those that find their way into your aquarium will find a nice warm home, with a superabundance of food from the standpoint of their tiny appetites, within which they can multiply like mad. They're a vital part of soil ecology, and without them, an awful lot of soils around the world would be a lot less fertile, because they act as part of the chain that converts large pieces of humus into smaller and smaller pieces, right down to the level of tiny particles that bacteria can act upon. A topic known to entomologists as 'POM', short for Particulate Organic Matter, the systematic breakdown of which powers the world's soil ecology and an awful lot of ecology in freshwater habitats too (where the agents are a different collection of organisms including ostracods, which I've also had in the Panda Fun Palace before today).

Springtails are considered by some authorities to lie outside the true insects taxonomically, though their study still falls within the remit of entomology. They're fond of damp soil (over-water your house plants and not only will some of your house plants drown, the soil will become a seething mass of Springtails feasting on detritus in the potting compost), and so a tropical aquarium with floating plants and a ready supply of rich food courtesy of the aquarist is, basically, Sprintgail heaven.

The reason for some of the taxonomic changes of late is this: while there are wingless insects, for example, the Siphonaptera or fleas, these insects originally possessed wings in their evolutionary past, and vestiges of the original wing structures of their distant ancestors are still present in the thoracic segments of Sophonaptera and other wingless insect. The Collembola or Springtails, on the other hand, arose from ancestors that never evolved wings, and thanks to the discovery that the Collembolla constitute a monophyletic group (they all evolved from a single common ancestral type, unlike paraphyletic groups that require differentiation according to their different evolutionary ancestors) some scientists now classify them as being separate from the insects proper.

Here is a nice PDF document on the Springtails courtesy of the Natural History Museum in London. Makes interesting reading.

Enjoy!


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Thanks Bob & Calilasseia for the interesting information.

I haven't seen them since that first day. In that tank I have a breeding net & I suspect that tiny bits of food got caught in the material of the netting that is above the water surface. It was time to change the net over anyway and they seem to have vanished now.

Cheers

Cheers
TW

They move on if the food source dries up.

They are interesting creatures in their own right, though they're hardly pet material.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002