Identify Me - Not Sure What These Are...

Just noticed these black "dots" swimming around in one of the bins I had sitting outside in my backyard, and figured I'd "harvest" them and feed them to my fish, but before I do, I want to see if anyone can identify what these things are...they sure don't swim around like Daphnia, because they seem to "zoom" around as they swim. Does anyone have an idea what these things might be, just from their swimming pattern? I don't have a macro lens, and only have an iphone4s camera to use (unless I think of something else).





UPDATE
I lied, here's a better close up video (thanks to my webcam. lol)

That definitely looks like daphnia we have...are they shaped like little seeds and have fan like structures they use to move around with?...

the also could be a type of aquatic beetle..hard to tell with the video can you get closer?

Edit: just watched the other video..definitely look like a little beetle type bug.

Kaosu: Yeah it's weird... I mean, I've seen daphnia come in at the shop (Aquarium Co-Op) an they're relatively bigger, about the size of celery seeds... and they have a kind of "vibrating/wafting" motion when they swim, due to their fan-like appendages.

These, however are about the size of ground up black pepper grains, and they seem to "zip" or "zoom" through the water... I haven't introduced them into the tanks yet until I can get some kind of answer as to what these might be. If anything, I can just dump them back out if they turn up as a threat to my fishies lol!!

my Idea would be some type of Naucoridae

something like this
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still kinda hard without a closer look.

Kaosu: Hmmm... yeah, unfortunately I don't have a better camera that does macro shots. lol... Blerg. I think these things are more rounder in shape, but yeah, it really is hard to tell. =P

yeah not saying thats what it is but something similar. I have seen them in ponds around here..the bugs you have just cant find a site that says what they are.

Right, and I think it's safe to say that these little things don't have any kind of visible legs... Ugh I wish I had a microscope with me! =P

I have seem more 'what am I?' posts lately.   Are there just more hitchhikers or are more people getting involved in the box?

Well, I've had a bin full of water, and I just noticed them today lol so.. yeah. Anywho, I have footage of them under a microscope (thank goodness) they do look like little daphnia because they DO have little swimming appendages. Kinda look like pistachios with little swimmer arms coming out of the front. lol!

So, with the help of my partner's son's toy microscope, I managed to get this footage. I placed the iphone4s's camera right into the microscopes eye piece thing...neato!

Ostracods? That's what they look like to me. They're the right size - fantastic fish food.

pbmax wrote:Ostracods?

They sell an ointment for that....

DMD123 wrote:

pbmax wrote:Ostracods?

They sell an ointment for that....

 

Good job with the footage......I think a penicillin shot helps clear that up.

And y'all call yourselves fish nerds?? *sigh*

So.....are daphnia a type of ostracod? whatisthisidonteven...

upon furthing inspection... they do kinda look like these... so maybe they're tiny baby forms of daphnia? omg. I WOULD LOVE IT IF IT WAS!

Do I get a prize?

A nice warm HUUUUMID hug? =P

Ive posted this before but I like the site's photos:
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Ostracods(Seed shrimp)
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bleh.  Your prizes suck.  

They should be pretty easy to propagate though. I have some of these guys in most of my fish-less tanks.

DMD123: A-hah! I was guessing that those were the things, they do look hairy and have those appendages that make them scurry around really fast in the water. Thanks for the info DMD123! Now, I shall put them in my 10 gallon shrimp only tank. I have two baby guppy fry in that tank that I will eventually take out and plop in my 20 gallon tank, so may they feast on tiny seed shrimp for the time being!

pbmax: Hahahaha, well perhaps the longer I work at Aquarium Co-Op, my prizes will be better =P

I'm just curious how they got there in the first place, I mean... how exactly do they move from one body of water to another body of water?? It's so weird...

What was in their container before?

Interestingly, according to Wikipedia, male ostracods have 2 winkies. Not to be outdone, female ostracods have two genital openings.  

pbmax: Hmm... well, I just filled the container with water, and left it alone for a long time. I did, however use that container as a fountain um... water catcher thinger, for my shishi-odoshi. And then I just left the water and let it go stagnant, all of a sudden, I found those things in the water.

So, that's why I can't think of anything that may have latched onto it, or laid eggs on it before I tossed it into the bin of water. They kinda just magically...appeared.

(side note: here are the two bins I'm talking about, these are Shishi Odoshi, aka Dear Scarers, you may have seen them before in movies and whatnot [Kill Bill, etc...])

I need to gather some of the stuff in my outdoor tub, and have a closer look at it... there is always fascinating stuff in there. Besides the obligatory mosquito larvae, I have also seen little black things like that zipping around, so I may have something like that as well.

As far as how things get there... I'm assuming they hitchhike on bugs, birds, but other than that, I'm not sure. Now that I think of it, that's an interesting topic to look into. I'm also on another forum in the UK, I haven't posted there much lately, but there is a guy with the username Vale! who is the master of outdoor tubs. I may pop over there and ask him how these things make their way into tiny isolated bodies of water like these.

Some quick research says their eggs can survive for a long time without any water or anything. So it could be from dirt, plants, just about anything.

And they can apparently hitchhike on birds, the wind, amphibians, etc.

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So that answers that.

LuminousAphid: ........ Ryan? Is that you? HAH! Our outdoor bins are awesome like that. Hahahaha...
That's kinda freaky that they hitchhike on other bugs or even birds... I mean, who woulda thought that they could live out of the water for so long. Or maybe their eggs can live that long out of water, like brine shrimp. I'm not sure. It still boggles me how they found their way into my bins. And yes, my bins have mosquito larva as well.

Yes, please do ask him, as I'm really curious how this happened, and I can't seem to do much research on it either.

pbmax: ......holy crap. Imagine just having them clinging onto our skin..or clothes...or. Wow. that's pretty impressive! Go mother nature

I, for one, welcome our ostracod overlords.

I do as well.

*bows down*

WE ARE NOT WORTHYYYY (yet!).

With that said, I still wish I had some access to Daphnia. Ugh. I've been told you could just go to some kind of body of water and then scoop up some water, and presto...Daphnia! . . . some day. . . . soooooome day.

I need more room for aquaria... then I could keep stuff like that

Ditto. Well, that, or a really huge pond

I thought about a pond, but then I'd have to have a fortress of steel mesh or netting over it just to keep the raccoons and herons out.  And how ugly would that be??  

There's a pair of great blue herons that fly over my house pretty regularly.  And some bonehead neighbors of mine regularly feed the neighborhood raccoons. Granted, fat raccoons might be less likely to work hard for their food, but one never knows. Nasty little creatures...

Yeah, I wish I had some kind of solarium here at the house, so that everything is enclosed, kinda like a green house, then I'd be able to build an "outdoor" pond and not have to worry about pesky raccoons trying to snatch up an expensive dinner.

PokeSephiroth wrote:pbmax: Hmm... well, I just filled the container with water, and left it alone for a long time. I did, however use that container as a fountain um... water catcher thinger, for my shishi-odoshi. And then I just left the water and let it go stagnant, all of a sudden, I found those things in the water.

So, that's why I can't think of anything that may have latched onto it, or laid eggs on it before I tossed it into the bin of water. They kinda just magically...appeared.

(side note: here are the two bins I'm talking about, these are Shishi Odoshi, aka Dear Scarers, you may have seen them before in movies and whatnot [Kill Bill, etc...])

What the heck PokeSephiroth?!? You have water things going on all over! NeeeeeeatO!
I hope this video was taken a while ago. If you have Bleeding hearts still blooming I would be soooooo jealous!

I'm hoping to make a water feature in my back yard in the near future as well. I am going to have to research what you got going on though, it neat!

theChad: Yeah the video was shot a couple months ago when the weather was still warmer =P The bleeding hearts are already in the process of turning dormant for the year

The Shishi Odoshi is a pretty simple device, it's a nice addition to the backyard, garden. I also plan on making a Suikinkutsu, which loosely translates to a water harp, if I remember correctly. Watch this video to check out what it is, it's pretty neato as well, AND seems pretty simple to make!



To stay on topic, I went ahead and added these little critters into my 10 gallon tank, I figure that I can let them propagate in that tank and harvest them to feed to my other tanks. !!!! Now if only I can do that with Daphnia. ~~

Very cool About the fancy fountains

pbmax: I've got some extra bamboo left over to possibly make a third one, but I don't think my neighbors would like having three of those shishi odoshi sounds LOLOLOL!!

PokeSephiroth wrote:To stay on topic, I went ahead and added these little critters into my 10 gallon tank, I figure that I can let them propagate in that tank and harvest them to feed to my other tanks. !!!! Now if only I can do that with Daphnia. ~~

The Suikinkutsu is pretty cool, I never would have thought those metallic sounds could come from just reverberation inside a clay pot

Also, if you get those ostracods going, you should totally bring some to the shop sometime so I can get my handson some. All I can seem to propagate outside is mosquito larvae, and I feel like that is just rude to my neighbors

Speaking of which, does anyone have an efficient way to catch mosquito larvae from a large body of water? I have used a net to get them in a smaller container, then eye-droppered them into the tank, but it is very time consuming. I was thinking I didn't want to put water from the outside basin in my tank, but would that hurt anything? There probably aren't any fishy diseases or anything in there, because it has never had fish in it, but maybe bacteria would be an issue?

LimunousAphid: Yeah, I was shocked to learn that it was just a huge clay pot that makes the noises. I do have a clay pot, it's just not as big, so the sound is so minuscule, that you can HARDLY hear it. I need a bigger pot, like..one that's as tall as me. bwahahahaha!!

Sure, I'll see if I can bag some up for you. I don't have much in my bins, but I'll see what I can do. If you come by the shop tomorrow, I can bag some up tonight.

Eh you don't have to do it now, if you wanna see how the colony gets going and then give me some, that's fine! I have just been looking for a small, live food that I can keep easily enough that will be good for guppy fry.

Are they small enough for baby shrimplets to eat? I have RCS that should start having babies sometime soon, and have been wondering about that. Or do they just eat biofilm and little microscopic critters?

Dwarf Shrimp rarely eat live food.  When they do, it's likely because part of the "live" food was dead or dying.

I see.... I remember when I had ghost shrimp from petsmart, in my 10 gallon, the first time I fed live blackworms they just went absolutely nuts. They would grab the worm in their little pincers and wrestle with it for a while, and then eventually either chop it in half and consume, or the bigger ones would slowly eat a whole blackworm alive.

I just looked into this, and I think this may be a good example of the difference between Atyid (small scraping claws) and Palaemonid (normal claws) types of shrimp. Most of the common dwarf shrimp are Atyid, with smal front claws adapted to scraping algae or picking up detritus, not really for catching live food. The ghost shrimp have normal front claws with pincers, so they are able to handle live food.

Oh well, I think ostracods would still be ideal for feeding guppy fry once they are past the "first bites" stage... still nothing to fill that stage, I think that's where live baby brine shrimp might be my next try

dwarf will eat small live worms on occasion, but that's about it in my experience - they're not hunters like ghost shrimp and macrobrachium are. Ghost shrimp will even eat fry sometimes.

My above post should read "DWARF shrimp"; that was a misstatement on my part.

I've never seen any of my shrimp go for anything alive, which is why I placed the seed shrimp in my 10 gallon tank because that tank only consists of shrimp

So I figured the seed shrimp would be safe, and will multiply quickly. Bwaaahahaha... worse comes to worst, I can add some guppy fry in the tank for them to feast on the seed shrimp, and then I can take the fry out before they end up gobbling up any baby shrimp =P

But yeah, I'll bring some when I can get the seed shrimp to multiply. I figure the ones outside look kinda lame at the moment...

That's a good point - I have ostracods thriving in my shrimp tanks, so they're likely not being predated. The more you feed, the more you're likely to get.

pbmax, nice! I think I'll just have them eat whatever is already in there. I only drop like 2-3 veggie sticks once a week or so.