Will small gouramis eat hydra?

[YuccaPatrol]

I've had hydra appear a few times in my fish aquaria. They have always disappeared after a couple weeks. I'd suggest backing off on feeding and being patient and they will likely go away on their own.

The hot water treatment sounds good though

[Hillgirl]

THANKS!!!!
So far I have been watching the loaches and they just run over the top of my shrimp without giving them a second sniff. I figure they will eventually start nipping at them though and I'll have to move them. I get tickled because my male shrimp pick on my Loaches!!! They chase them around flailing there front legs as if to try and scare the fish away.

[-GlitcH-]

The tiny white bugs are probably copepods. They often ride in on plants and are harmless. The hydra will kill baby shrimp. Pond snails are no problem, they are easy to trap & remove. I'm pretty sure the loaches will eat shrimp, so watch out.

I've got these copepods I think.

Do these look like copepods to you guys?

[badflash]

Yes indeed they do look just like copepods. That one happens to be a cyclops. See
http://www.micrographia.com/specbiol/cr ... 371bor.htm

They won't hurt a thing and if they stay in your tank it means you have very good water quality. The hydra love them though.

[Gregor Samsa Mendel]

if they stay in your tank it means you have very good water quality.

I don't know if the presence of cyclops in a tank necessarily means that the water quality is good.

I'm a high school science teacher. I have a 10 gal tank in my class that's supposed to have just algae, plankton, and snails. It has no filtration. It gets no aeration. I never change the water. About once a week I toss in a cube of freeze-dried tubifex to keep the water from getting too clear. The quality of the water must be awful (I've never tested it) but there are plenty of daphnia, cyclops and ostracods. Maybe there are species of cyclops that are adapted to living in stagnant pools.

[badflash]

If the phosphate or amonia levels were more than a few ppm, you'd have no daphnia. daphnia are widely used as "canaries" of water quality due to their sensitivity to pollutants. Looks like you have other things that are working on the water. Algae is actually quite good at this.

I watch the copepod population in my cherry-only tanks closely. A rapid dissapearance means it is time for an early water change.

Why are you keeping a supposedly polluted tank?

[Gregor Samsa Mendel]

I keep the tank in my classroom. It has lots of things that show up under a microscope.

[Mustafa]

The quality of the water must be awful (I've never tested it) but there are plenty of daphnia, cyclops and ostracods. Maybe there are species of cyclops that are adapted to living in stagnant pools.

Seems like the quality of your water is just fine. If you test it I bet you that the nitrates and phosphates are either very low or non-existant. Just because there is no filtration or aeration does not mean that the water quality has to be bad. If your water quality were really bad you would not have the animals you listed in there. And by the way, "stagnant" water does not mean bad water. There are lots of stagnant pools in nature that have excellent water quality. Good water quality in an aquarium usually means low organic load, i.e. low or no nitrates, phosphates, nitrites, ammonia and other dissolved organics. Algae and other plants can metabolize all of these nitrogen compounds so it won't necessarily have to build up all that quickly, especially if you feed just once a week. However, if you keep feeding at that rate without doing any water changes ever (or at least removing some of the algae to export nutrients/organics) then your water quality will go downhill, too. It can take a few weeks or a few months but it will happen sooner or later.