Weird insect/parasite in my freshwater tank??? What is this thing???!!?
I have a 25 gallon freshwater aquarium, with one live plant, lots of snails, and 4 fish.
Today i found one of my fish dead and some kind of weird insect/larvae/parasite thing on the bottom of the tank.
The insect was about a half inch long, dark grey/black, had 6 legs, what looked like two wings on its back, and a squirmy segmented tail that looked kind of worm-like. It had no antennae. When it moved, it kind of squirmed its tail back and forth-similar to what I’ve seen mosquito larvae do.
I have NO idea what the heck this thing was, but I’m really freaked out about it. Anyone have any idea what it could be???
To help, I found this picture online of damselfly larvae. It looks identical to the one in the bottom right corner, except it had no antennae, and didn’t have the three sections at the end of its tail.
http://www.uta.edu/biology/robinson/damlarv.gif
Ugh how awful….I have no idea either but who cares, get rid of it! LOL I’m not sure if it’s tetracycline or erythromycin that gets rid of parasites, but they’re pretty easy to treat. It involves 5 days of antiobiotics in your tank followed by a big water change, followed by another a week later. Better hurry!
Sounds like it could be a Dragonfly larva.
Well, unless you have the tank outside, you can rule out the Dragonfly/Damselfly larvae, so it could be a parasite that hitched a ride on your plant or even in your fish if you just recently got them, just try removing it and making a good water change.
It’s damselfly/dragonfly larvae. I found one in my tank about half an hour ago, scared the hell out of me!! If you just do a web search you’ll find that heaps of other people have had them too. No one seems completely sure how they get in there. But they can be dangerous to fish and should be removed!