Damselfly nymph ate my fry! HELP

[hoss304]

I recently had a total of 5 fry show up in my 10gal tank. I went to the pet store and bought some floating plants for them to hide in. The adults ate a few so I went and bought a breeder net . 2 survived so I put them in the net. Since then I have added 3 more fry that showed up in tank. Past few days I've noticed I only see 2 when I feed them. I had one of the floating plants in the breeder net. I removed it to have a look. Only two fry left and a weird looking creature I thought was a shrimp. After some Google searching I find out it's a damselfly nymph. I have done away with the breeder net. Returned the fry to the tank and removed the live plants. I also now have two tiny snails in tank. I killed the damselfly nymph. Just wondered what I should do. I read that if there is one there is more.

It's a 10 gallon tank. Fancy guppies , Cory cats
Double sponge filter and sand substrate.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

 

[Colin_T]

Hi and welcome to the forum

Plants and fish should always be quarantined before being added to an established tank to prevent things like this happening. If you don't have space for quarantining plants you should at least put them in a white bucket with tap water and shake them about. Then check each plant for snails, snail eggs (small clumps of jelly), and other pests (damselfly larvae). Rinsing the plants under tap water can also help to wash some things off.

Your best bet now is to put the baby fish back in the breeding net and feed them well. When they have grown a bit you can put them in the tank with the adults.

I would squash the snails so they don't grow, breed and spread throughout the tank, but the choice is yours as to whether or not you let them live.

The plant you bought (Elodia or Hydrilla) would have come from an outdoor pond, which is why it had damselfly larvae and snails. It might also have Hydra but they shouldn't affect baby livebearers.

If the plant still has a lead weight around it, remove that and just let the stems float about or plant a couple in the tank.

A good plant for livebearers is Water Sprite (Ceratopteris thalictroides/ cornuta). It floats on the surface but can also be planted into the substrate where it grows into a lovely light green shrub.