Nazi fish killer strikes again.

[spewns]

Hi Folks, Got a new job this week so I havent posted or responded. Also didnt want to "pad my post count" lol.
Well ,we live and learn but i always seem to have a million things to learn.
Why, just this week I have learned about feeding fish live food.
I went to the river to collect some live plants for the tank. ignoring the advice i have seen about bleaching them first i put some in the tank to let the fish munch on them. To my surprise the fish went into a frenzy eating the various creepy crawlies off the plants.......hmm, a bonus, i thought.
i did this for several days, taking out the old plants and putting in fresh.......till one day...... i put in a new batch of plants and saw the coolest looking worm thing. it was about an inch long pale and was inching along one of the plants (catapillar like) till it reached the tip. it then kinda wrapped its tail around the tip of the plant and stretched out its full body length and just wavered there. upon closer examination (without my reading glasses) it appeared to have a head of sorts. hmm, i thought, the fish are gonna love eating this guy....very substantial.
well, the first fish accidently got close to where it was and the darn worm jerked scaring the fish away. another fish, seeing the movement, hit like lightning! but to my surprise so did the worm! the D*%n worm attached itself to the belly of the fish and trailed along while the fish was jerking around and trying to scrape it off. i grabbed a net and netted the fish, which was becoming exhausted, and tried to pull the evil worm off. the fish and worm were both too small for my fingers so i went in search of tweezers and glasses. could find either. so i quickly made a cup of strong salt solution and dipped the fish in it. after 5 minutues the worm still moved so i dumped both of them in an uncerimonious burial at sea. it was only a 12 cent feeder fish but i felt like a murderer all the same.
all this just for my morbid curiousity of seeing the fish feed on live food that was FREE......the moral to this story.....i think you can figure it out. lol
P.S. what happened to my avatar?????

 

[Guest]

lessons learned...

Sounds like you had the larva of a Diving Beetle. They are parasites on larger fish, and will eat fry and/or very small fish any time they can catch em. I'm really not an expaert but thats what comes to mind from your description. I had something much like that ouside in my pond 2-3 years ago. I let nature take its course, lost a few fishes, netted and disposed of the beetles when they grew up. Pond vs. Tank is a whole different story though. I have far less control outside, critters like that just show up, I dunno where they come from. Birds probabaly. I only have one type of plant there from the wild, and I trated it with an Alum solution for like 2 days before putting it in the pond.

I'm assuming you already thought of this, but you could introduce any number of diseases into your tank this way too. God only knows what kinda bacteria, viruses, funguses live out there.

 

[CatfishFanatic]

It could also be a leach. I sometimes get those in live foods from the LFS. When they are "walking" around a container, they look like a worm (but have suckers on both head and tail) and move like you say.

 

[spewns]

thanks corv and cat, i am aware i took a big chance and as much as it embarrasses me to say so.....i do know how to clean the plants. it was pure stupidity.
It was an interesting experience, too bad it was at the expense of the fish.
I am still trying to search on what this worm thing was. It looked just like one of those small red garden worms, about an inch long except it was real pale(till it latched on to the fish then it darkened up real quick), it did that inch worm movement and it had that "head". i only noticed the "head on one end. thanks for reminding me of what i should be doing.....and nice to meet you both!
hey, i just used the spell check for the first time and NO mistakes.......in your face alzhiemers!