Just scooped this disgusting little thing out of one of our tanks. Never seen anything like it before (and it has 6 legs) The tank had a thorough clean a week ago and has had nothing added for weeks now eg plants etc.

Any ideas anyone????

Looks like you got a nymph of damselfly or dragonfly. It probably come in with the plants when it was an egg or very young. Kill it! As the nymph likes to eat fish and are very predatory.

i have had these in my shrimp tank its some sort of lava dragon fly maybe ?
comes in on plants, it could of been in there a good while without you noticing.

i had to strip my tank down to get rid of all the bugs, i bought cheap pond plants and put them in my tank thats where mine came from

yes i was think ing the same thing

Thanks everyone What are the chances that there are lots more of them? Yuk.....it' makes me cringe

i found 4 in mine before i stripped it down and one of them was hugeeeee

Hi
Just googled it and it is a damselfly larvae

Ooooo noo Shaz don't say that.....they give me the creeps If it has more than 4 legs....it has no place in this house

I had quite a lot in my tanks ... they ate well over 100 fry. One even turned into a dragonfly. I though that they had come in on plants, but I'm more inclined to believe that they came in with the live food as I didn't just find them in one tank, I found some in a tank without plants.

That must have been so creepy I'd not thought about it coming in with the live food but I suppose it's possible. My tank hasn't had any new plants added in ages.

Get the Nymph out of your tank right away, chances are that will be the only one, which is usually the case in aquarists tanks but that is not to say there will be another odd one kicking about, There certainly will not be an infestation if thats what your worried about. Use some long tweezers and get the predator out.
Regards
BigC

No worries.....it was out in a flash as soon as we saw it. I'm getting paranoid now that there are more and if there are I'll find them

This is an odd question, but if one was to actually keep a nymph in a tank what would you feed it?

These guys are cool and surprisingly long lived, so I'm curious.

Taking some guesses based on what wikipedia says about their nymph stage. It would probably require live food, or at least prefer it. Throw some guppies in there, and I'm sure they'll produce enough fry to keep one fed, provided it doesn't get big enough to eat the guppies themselves. The longer-lived species are also generally the larger ones.

This post has been edited by Corleone: May 23 2008, 06:01 AM