Can anyone ID this?

[mattoid]

Hi, is anyone out there aware of what this is in the pics? They're in a newly set up 7g/28ltr shrimp tank, lightly planted at the moment with mopani wood and silica substrate. 5 RCS plus around 20-40 babies as of last night from two of them. Tank's been stocked for about a week and seeded with 6month old running filter and plants for a week or two before stocking. I haven't taken any readings since putting RCS in, but last week a few hours prior to stocking was 25•c, 7ph, 0 NH3, 0 NO2 & 5ish NO3. Apologies for phone pic resolution, Tank is at work...
it's that funny looking white dot with legs/split tail, only noticed them today and there are around 50 give or take, some swimming freely, some on the glass. thanks...


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[Fishfur]

Copepod.. small critters, great fish food, harmless enough. You can siphon it out if you like and flush it.

 

[mattoid]

fantastic, thanks!
I'll let them be as they're almost fun to watch...almost


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[Fishfur]

If I lived anywhere near you I'd come and get it. I'd love to culture them for fish food myself. Great fry food !

 

[mattoid]

I haven't seen any in my tanks at home, but on closer inspection of my unfiltered snail tank at work, I have hundreds upon hundreds of them in there.
thanks for the advice, I think I'll harvest some and see if I can get them going both with and alongside the blackworm and algae cultures. my family will absolutely love me to jump on to another aquarium based project


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[Fishfur]

I am sure if I'd been as into culturing live foods as a kid, as I am now, my mother would have disowned me. I culture a lot of things for my pets.
Copepods are filter feeders.. best to culture greenwater for them. Nannochloropsus is likely the easiest thing to feed them, I usually have it around.
Here's a link to a site with good general info on these critters including culture. Main difference is he's talking salt water, but Nanno algae is one of the very few that grows equally well in either fresh or salt water. There are other FW algaes you can culture too, four at least that are fairly common. I get them from a lab who supplies schools and such with specimens and whatnot.
The Breeder's Net: A Simple How-to On Home Culture Of Copepods — Advanced Aquarist | Aquarist Magazine and Blog

 

[mattoid]

wow! you've taken it and my mind to a new level...the extent of my algal cultures is small tubs of water outside in indirect sunlight with some gravel, an occasional water change, a scrape, filter, then feed...
black worms I'm comfortable with, but I have completely shown my ignorance with this one! very excited now.
home brew for the fish...


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[Fishfur]

I find that culturing live foods is a bit addictive, but I think it's worth it in terms of the health and wellbeing of the fish and other critters I keep. I've had as many as six different species of single cell algaes going, plus rocks in a jar getting covered with the soft green stuff for some Otos to feed on. I feed the cultured greenwater not only to things like daphnia but also to my clams and filter feeding shrimp.

I keep wingless Melanogater fruit flies, because top feeders love the flies & bottom feeders love the maggots. I have springtails, also great for surface feeders, and microworms, moina, and a very few dero worms I hope will increase in numbers. I sometimes have daphnia & for awhile, I had some ostracods. I never fed those to fish, they didn't reproduce very well.

I wish I could find a source for more ostracods, they were really very entertaining to watch, for such tiny creatures. Supposed to be filter feeders, but they appear to graze just like most shrimp do. I just got some resting eggs, similar to brine shrimp cysts, for some fairy shrimp and clam shrimp, which are fresh water species from the Arizona dry lakes, which I hope will hatch and grow too. Fish food and pets all in one

I'm thinking about culturing black worms too, simply because they're rather expensive. All the fish seem to love them, even my very tiny little rasboras, which aren't even an inch long, take them eagerly. I have even seen shrimp eating blackworms. I also have Habrosus and Pygmaeus cories, and watching them yank worms from the substrate is interesting, given the worms are usually a good bit longer than they are.

I fish the worms out of their container, gently, with a chopstick and dangle them over my Betta's tanks too. They snag them off the chopstick, then chase the ones they miss down to the bottom. The Bettas were adopted, originally from Thailand, and one is such a picky eater, he would starve without live food.

It's fun to see the enthusiasm fish have for live foods, which is why I keep trying to find new ones to grow for them.