Re: mis- over-stocked FW induced prob.s   07/23/09
Hello
Thank you Bob Fenner for your advice I will try it.
<Ah, good>
Hopefully I will be able to write back "problem solved" Also I have just setup another tank so will be moving the Oscars out soon.
Thank you once again.
Vishwas Shetty
<Welcome my friend. BobF> 

Unidentified freshwater critters  12/14/08 Dear crew, Can you please help me identify these bugs that are running amok in my freshwater invertebrate tank (Red Cherry Shrimp and Melanoides sp.). I don't think they're parasites, they seem to eat whatever the shrimp eat and hang out a lot in the sponge filter and in the sand. They do swim in the water column and appear to have a pair of antennae when observed with a magnifying glass and measure maybe 1-2mm. I don't intend to try to eradicate them as they don't appear to do any harm, but I would like to know what these might be, just out of curiosity. Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you, Evan <Evan, I can't really be certain from the photos you sent, but my assumption is that these are nothing more than copepods. They're completely harmless, and indeed edible, and should be taken by some of your fish, particularly anything that sifts the sediment (for example dwarf cichlids). Now, when invertebrates "run amok" in aquaria, it's often a good sign there's an excess of organic matter, i.e., food for them to eat. So cut back on the portions at dinner time! If need be, stop feeding altogether for a week, and the snails and shrimps will do just fine on algae alone. Otherwise, don't worry about them too much. Heck, if this was a marine reef tank, you'd be happy to see these chaps! Cheers, Neale.>

Re: the incurable itch, now unid'ed FW crustacean  9/2/05 Okay, I just seen something.  I was feeding my fish and crawling on one of the apple snails was a bug, it looked like a common flea that you would find on a dog or cat.  It was brown and big for an aquarium bug. I thought it was a bug that fell in my tank and was going to drowned but it just crawled around on the snail and it was carrying a little sac.  It carried the sac some where near the snail's eye and then I lost track of it because the snail retracted into its shell, now comes the weirdest part.  I think the bug crawled into my snails butt and is just sitting there because I can see a brown thing through the skin and I don't think it is poop because it isn't falling out. I am not 100% sure though. I just put the apple snails in the tank a few days ago and I KNOW they are healthy because they were born here in a 20g tank down stairs where they have lived without fish for several months. My step dad also has some of the snails including the mother in his 60g tank and I have never before seen anything like this bug in my tank.  It is way too big for me to have missed crawling on one of my fish.  Any ideas? <Is very likely one of many freshwater crustaceans. Very likely not harmful>   It didn't look like fish lice, or fish fleas, it was way too big, it was like at least the size of the apostrophe on the keyboard.   Oh yeah, also that is not a rock on the bottom it is bog wood.   <I see, thank you> Again thanks for your help. I need it!  I have to admit that I am sort of freaked out about this and I am feeling pretty down. I had high hopes about getting back into the hobby and was planning on adding either a few Kuhlis or some dwarf frogs to the tank but it seems like my tank will never be healthy. <Mmm, give it time... could be chemical/s leaching from the bog wood... try removing this for a few weeks, the carbon...> I have had problems right from the start despite all my efforts.  I hope I can get through this with all my fish and my tank intact. <There is something likely very simple at play here... to be found, fixed in time. Bob Fenner>

Help me I've got fleas I have a 6 gallon fish tank with 4 fancy tailed guppies, a Chinese algae eater, and an ugly sucker fish of some sort. I do not know the name of the sucker fish, but believe that after I bought him and put him in my tank, is when the problem started. I have some sort of fast breeding crustaceans taking over my tank. I have broken my tank down and cleaned and cleaned and cleaned it on several occasions, but they keep coming back. They seem to start down in the gravel, then you can see them look like they are floating up to the top, just to swim back down. After a week or so, they will start up moving and down the walls of the tank, almost marching like an army.  I have asked several pet stores and they sell me stuff to treat the fish with, even though I have tried to tell them that the fish are fine. The fish will not eat these things and these things do not attach themselves to the fish. I even dipped some out of these things out of the tank and took it to several places that sell fish. They don't have a clue what they are! I looked at 3 under a 5X's magnifying glass. They are light tan color, shaped like a football with black dots (I could not see any legs), and feel like a piece of sand. I hope you can help me with getting rid of these, because I really do enjoy having a fish tank.  < I think you have a species of daphnia or water flea. Some small red species are edible to fish, but others are hard and fish do not like them. I suspect that your gravel or some live plants may be responsible. If you used a inexpensive natural sand then I think the local river bed may have contained some of these critters and it took them a little while to reproduce in the numbers you now see. The red ones feed on algae particles in the water. In fact some green water would be required to keep them alive. I have seen something similar to what you describe in with pond plants and duckweed all the time but I am not sure what they eat. Since you have such a small tank I would take the tank apart. Then I would wash the sand thoroughly in a five gallon bucket along with the decorations. Carefully add a cup of bleach and let everything soak. The water fleas should be floating to the top of the bucket dead. If not then add another 1/2 cup of bleach. If everything is dead then I would get some rubber gloves and wipe down the interior of the tank with the bleach mixture. Rinse everything good at least three times. Put everything back and check the chlorine levels in the water. Add a water conditioner to remove any remaining chlorine residue. Your tank has now been sterilized and you have no biological filtration so you will have to carefully watch the ammonia levels until your tank gets cycled again Don't add any of the water from the container with the fish. Pour the fish into a net and place them back in the tank.-Chuck>