# seed shrimp or water mites?



## auban (Jun 23, 2012)

if they look like the things in this video, they are seed shrimp and they are harmless. i cant think of anything that will eat them that wont eat your shimp as well...

http://s1242.photobucket.com/albums/gg522/sjveck/?action=view&current=20120714_102607.mp4


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## greenman857 (Feb 25, 2012)

Sounds like copepods. Thet look round when swimming but oval when at rest. Swim like little UFOs zig-zagging through the water.
I've got em and like em and seem fine with shrimp but I don't have any fish...


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## Newman (Jul 3, 2010)

copepods are tiny specs. they dont swim around they kinda dart. if they are in the water column they will sharply dart as if they were using tiny paddles. most of the time you will find them on the glass.

what you see is probably seed shrimp. they are annoying to look at, round bubbly things.


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## auban (Jun 23, 2012)

seed shrimps can be great food for fish, but not all fish eat them. i have raised notho killis exclusively on seed shrimp, but those fish are an oddity. they will eat just about anything.


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## nyxkitten (Jul 24, 2012)

I am guessing they are seed shrimp because when I look up copepods, they seem to have a tail. What I have doesn't have a tail.

auban - is the video like blown up? Because they look HUGE!!!!


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## auban (Jun 23, 2012)

no, the video is of a desert species that i culture as live food. i have various live food cultures like that one from all over the country...
they lay eggs that need to be dried out... a LOT of them. every time i rehydrate the sand in their tank i get more and more. lately, i can get about half a pound of them from a single 30 gallon tub within two weeks of hydrating them. they grow extremely fast.

there are thousands of species of these guys, ranging from nearly invisible to the naked eye to some marine species that get to be the size of large marbles. some have to have their eggs dried in order to hatch and some dont even lay eggs at all. most of the time, when you find some in a tank, it is from a species that lives in lakes. they just keep on breeding and breeding until something comes along and eats them. unfortunately they eat the same thing your baby shrimps do. that makes them difficult to get rid of if you dont like them. 

every so often i trade a large portion of my plants for dirt from the vernal pools around somebodies area. i then hydrate the dirt, isolate whatever is useful as live food, and grow them out. ostracods(seed shrimp) are some of the easiest to step up to mass production levels.


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## MiniFishRoom (Mar 23, 2012)

Catch as much as you can and ship it to me... sounds like a plan?


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## nyxkitten (Jul 24, 2012)

That's soo cool!!! Makes me wonder how they got into my tank. They are mass producing buggers! Well now there is more critters for my list of pets yay!


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## pinoyghost2 (Feb 13, 2012)

wanted to clean out a couple of my shrimp tanks from overstock of seed shrimps/cocopeds...they were getting out of hand. I took out all of the shrimps, and popped in a pair of my Golden Wonder Killiefish...they cleaned the tank overnight of ALL seed shrimps, not one left anywhere and were staring at me in the am looking for more snacks 

Best cleanup crew I have. I can now go ahead and revamp my shrimp tank for the new ones coming in Jan. Have a couple of baby killies livng in my Taiwan tank too...they were eggs on the plants I popped into the tank when I first set it up and didn't know they were there and they hatched out...have been living with my TB ever since.

They are getting bigger now so will need a new tank soon.
here the baby one and then Daddy. What you can't see with my camera shots is Daddy has emerald green eyes...just the coolest Ive ever seen.


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