Strange "fish"

[Cheryl]

I cleaned out my filter yesterday and found 3 live platy fry living in there and another strange creature. It is about 1.5cm long and resembles a brown grasshopper. It has 6 legs and what looks to be very small wings It lives totally under the water. It walks rather than swims, and can walk up and down the sides of the tank like a spider. Does anyone have any idea what this might be? I tried to take a pic but my camera will not focus on it.

Cheryl

 

[fishkers]

That'd be really cool to see if you could get a pic.

 

[*Fishkies*]

That's a weird sounding creature. Did you try using the Macro mode on your camera? It'd be awesome to see!

 

[Lynden]

Could also be an amphipod.

 

[Nevergone815]

!!!!!!!!! Flying fish!!!!!!!!!!!!

Naw. It could be: a dragonfly nymph, a damselfly nymph, or a mayfly nymph. Don't handle it though. I'm not sure about the damselfly and mayfly, but dragonfly nymphs have a very nasty bite.

I agree. I'm assuming you removed the fry from the filter, I'm sure they would eat it. That might even be the reason it went there, there were more and it was a food source or so (don't know how long the fry were there). Try to get ahold of tweezers or somethign and remove them liek that, or rinse out your filter in a sink and scold them to kill them. Or you could just release them or what IDK what you would prefer.

 

[Cheryl]

i rinsed all the layers of the filter and got what fry i could out. I then tippped the water from the bottom of the filter into a 1ft tank to get the rest of them they have been released into the big tank- there were only 3. The creature is in the 1ft tank still. I looked at pics of all the suggestions in google and i am very confident it is a dragonfly nymph. Where would this come from? would there be more?are they likelyto hurt my fish? ive not seen anything like it in the tank. it appears to be able to burrow into soft substrates.

 

[LisaLQ]

They come in on plants, we had one too last year. Incidentally their mouths are like extendable and half the length of their body, and they could easily eat small fish the same size as them. Get it out and squish it, or release it lol.

 

[prankster705]

dragon fly or damsel fly larvae... I love them, but they'll kill the fish... they're natural predators that are strict carnivores with "epxandable" jaws that will ambush hunt on fish and other tank creatures...

 

[three-fingers]

On the other hand, any bigger fish you have would appreciate it as a snack, so you could feed it to your fish.
Just release it outside is a pond/puddle/stream or whatever you have nearby .
Squishing it would be mean .

 

[annka5]

IMO you shouldn't release it - even if it is native to where you are, it could have some pathogen which is not which it has picked up from your tropical fish /tank /plants and could pass it on to local critters wherever you release it.

 

[three-fingers]

I seriously doubt that....