Water mites in Betta tanks?

[Silvermist80]

Hi all, hope this is the right subject. I have a Betta setup with private sections that I connected together using bridging. I went to clean it day before yesterday and there were thousands of these tiny bugs swimming around. I didnt add anything new. They were not on the fish and didn't seem to be bugging them. I set out to kill them because they were everywhere and didnt know what they were. They turned out to be very difficult to kill. Hot water didnt do it, so i broke out the bleach. I wound up having to do quite a lot of bleach and it still took probably 10 min for them to die. They also spread to my 2.5g hospital tanks. I siphoned them down to almost nothing, then added tap water. I left chlorine in the tap water, hope it kills them. Has anyone else seen or experienced these? Thanks!

 

[CassCats]

Do you got photos of it?

Could be cyclops or similar, though water mites exist and the little buggers ARE hard to kill lol

 

[Ch4rlie]

Could be planeria possibly?

A photo or two as NCaquatics mentioned earlier would be much more useful to try and identify these bugs, you don’t mention what colour these bugs are either.

 

[PheonixKingZ]

Photos (as mentioned above) will help us ID this pest.

 

[Silvermist80]

Do you got photos of it?

Could be cyclops or similar, though water mites exist and the little buggers ARE hard to kill lol

Forgot to mention, I *tried* to get a picture. I'll post the only one I got, but it sucks. The one with the arrow is more of an adult, the little blurs are the tiny ones, I think babies?

 

[CassCats]

Did they look like these?

 

[Silvermist80]

No, they were completely round. My boyfriend found a bigger sized one on top of the Betta tank and killed it. He said it was a little round bug also. They also zipped around in the water. When I added the bleach, they swam rapidly in circles.

 

[CassCats]

Possibly seed shrimp?

 

[Silvermist80]

So they are still swimming around in my hospital tanks. They are tiny tiny little things, my phone camera has a very hard time focusing in, but gave it a try. Again, arrows to the bigger ones, circles around super tiny ones.

 

[Ch4rlie]

Definitely not planeria in that case.

mhmm, mites of some sort is what I think, could even be cyclops or something like that.

No real idea from those photos, hard to take pics of tiny things I know.

Do the fish eat them or perhaps be irritated by those things?

 

[Silvermist80]

The Bettas seemed oblivious to them. I didnt see any on the fish themselves. I dont have fish in that tank currently, but in the Betta tanks there were tons and tons of them. They were all over my moss balls though

 

[CassCats]

I think they're seed shrimp. Harmless. But can be in large numbers if you overfeed.

https://media.sciencephoto.com/image/z2300118/800wm

 

[Silvermist80]

Interesting. I dont overfeeding the Bettas though, so that's rather odd. I give them 5 Betta Bits (little pellets) a day and that's it. My hospital tanks are totally empty of fish. Any idea how I got them? Only live plants I have are the Moss Balls.

 

[CassCats]

They may have come in as hitchhikers with the moss balls.
I wouldnt worry about them. Your numbers of them don't look bad, so I dont think its an issue. Maybe just an extra thorough gravel vac job and that should be fine. They won't hurt your fish or plants.

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

I think my black mollies would have a great time hunting those down and eating them.