Damsel Fly Nymphs

[FoundMoney]

Last week while doing a water change, and again this week when changing the water and moving things around in my tank, I saw a damsel fly nymph. The one last week I discovered in my waste water so I just chucked it out, but the one I saw today was swimming in the tank and I lost it and couldn't syphon it out. Are these things a problem? Are they going to multiply like crazy? If so, how do I get rid of them?

 

[Mr Miagi]

Im not sure i have heard of them, hmm. A while ago, a month i spose, i had a little orange fly on top of my water from a new plant i introduced, it did multiply, but my harliquins and gouramis made short work of em! Hehehe.....so can u explain urs to me a little bit more!

 

[Opcn]

They need to turn into full sized damsel flys before they can reproduce, assuming your tank is inside you probably brought some eggs in opn a plant or something, seeing as how a damsel acctually needs to land on the water to lay the eggs. they are only a problem to fish that they can catch, they have a hingeing jaw like apparatus called a mask that they swing out to bite small fish and invertibrates, If you have puffers or larger fish they make a nice treat but if you have fry they are a big risk, HTH

 

[Dubby]

In the wild these things eat tadpoles and such other water creatures. So if you have small fish, watch out!!!

 

[FoundMoney]

The smallest fish I have is an inch long Von Rio tetra. I don't think this nymph could eat a tetra. There are no fry or anything in the tank. I did see some other insect life in the tank last week - some small larval looking things almost like mosquite larva. The damselfly nymph is welcome to eat that.

A damselfly nymph looks like this:

You can read more about them here, if you're interested:

http/www.hants.gov.uk/sparsholtschoolsce...lfly_nymph.html