Thousands of tiny creatures in practically empty 36-gal bow front

FishyBean

New Member
Joined
Jun 25, 2025
Messages
11
Reaction score
10
Location
Algonquin, IL
Hi, this is FishyBean; I need some help on what to do. I never checked the water parameters because it was just a piece of wood soaking and the tank was in ambient room lighting 90% of the time.
I have a 36-gal bow front that only have a large piece of driftwood that was soaking to remove some of the tannin and a few pieces of hornwort, 2 potted sag grass and one anubis plant, pest snails (not many and about 6 sherry shrimp. The tank sat for months and the water, of course was extremely brown and had a brownish-black sludge forming on the bottom. I feed occasionally with algae tablets and sinking pellets. When I decided to change the water, I noticed some little creatures swimming on the front of the glass, after changing 80% of the volume, there were still some in the water. So, after settling a few days I lost he shrimp, and the creatures were back in all their glory. I gave some to my pygmy cory's and they went nuts over the fresh food, quickly gobbling it down. So, I added every two days to their tank.
I began reading about the types of things that will grow in the aquarium and assumed they were molina or daphnia. As the tank became filled with these little creatures, I decided to make the mixture of yeast and spirulina shown on several YouTube videos. The volume started declining so I must be feeding the wrong thing since the population flourished without do anything. Now the population is down to almost nothing. I also had to move two albino corydoras to the 36-gal tank to help clean it up.
I cannot get a good video to attach because the creatures are so tiny and my phone is an old model android.
 
If they really are daphnia, your experience is fairly typical. They build up to a large population, then crash. In my experience, cyclops/copepods, the other usual suspects, will do the same thing. It's normal. Sometimes if you're lucky seed shrimps and scuds will form semi-stable populations.
 

Most reactions

Back
Top