possible baby shrimps

**newtoshrimps** · 10-31-2012, 04:16 AM

I started up a 5.5 gallon tank 2 weeks ago. In tank: log, 3 slabs of stone, gravel, filter (sock wrapped around intake tube, held on with elastic), heater, light. I was setting it up for cherry shrimp.
Someone gave me some java moss (a nice big clump) and I put it on the log.
I went away on vacation for a week (had someone come in to turn light on and off)... other than that nothing done to tank.
I come back to find little white things darting around my tank (about a millimeter long). Some look like worms, but others look like they have lots of feet.
The person who gave me the java moss had a singapore flower shrimp in his tank (I didn't see any other shrimp).
Could I have baby shrimp? If so, how do I care for them?

**newtoshrimps** · 10-31-2012, 10:20 AM

forgot to mention: start-up water was partly taken from another tank, to speed up cycling (however, there are no shrimp in the other tank).
Could they be daphnia?

Any suggestions?

**Brhino** · 10-31-2012, 12:43 PM

singapore flower shrimp (aka wood shrimp or bamboo shrimp) do not reproduce in captivity. If you're certain that the tank the moss came from didn't have red cherry shrimp or another species that does breed easily, then what you're seeing can't be baby shrimp. There are many different species of tiny aquatic critters you could find living off plant material in an aquarium, though. You've probably got some harmless hitchhikers of one sort or another.

**newtoshrimps** · 10-31-2012, 04:05 PM

how can I find out what I have?
could they be brine shrimp? (not sure what he fed his fish)
can these hitchikers be fed to my baby swordtail or guppies?

remember, there is nothing living, but plants, (and whatever these critters are) in my new tank.

should I get rid of them? How?

**Brhino** · 10-31-2012, 05:40 PM

you could do a google image search for common freshwater hitchhikers: daphnia, scuds (the crustacean, not the surface-to-surface missile), brine shrimp (not freshwater but get used as food). If it's not any of those you have to just kind of file it under the "miscellaneous" category. If they're really only a millimeter long you probably won't be able to identify them without a microscope, and you really don't need to. They're just part of the natural ecosystem of a planted aquarium. Fish fry will feed on them if given the chance, but I really don't think you need to remove them or manage them.

**Strider199** · 10-31-2012, 11:59 PM

In my first shrimp tank I noticed these white very small squiggly critters after a time and thought nothing of them. A few weeks pasted and I started noticing these critters in/on the gravel,

Planaria, flatworms

Size: 0,3 - 1 cm, 0.1 - 3/8 inches

Non-parasitic flatworms. Crossed-eyed grossness, just pure yucky! The only small creature I dislike (I get shivers down my spine even thinking about them). If you split it, it will regenerate and you will end up having 2 planaria. There seems to be several different colours in the common ones found in aquariums, transparent, white, brown and red. There's actually nothing really horrible about them, but they can bother small shrimp and snails and might eat fish/snail eggs.

They love shrimp pellets, pieces of meat, dead fish/shrimp and they will also eat small live creatures if they can catch them. They move on the surfaces, even under the water surface and are most active by night. If disturbed, they will retract themselves (shorter and wider), let go and drop down to the bottom.

I'm not 100% sure if the little white swimming critters grew into these nightmare flat worms but I would bet my java moss on it.

**newtoshrimps** · 11-05-2012, 01:22 AM

I put 3 young guppies in the tank... they went nuts eating every live critter in the tank... I will take them out in a few days and move the red cherry shrimp to the 5.5 tank (now in 1.5 tank). The young guppies certainly have large bellies right now... LOL.

thanks for advice.