A bucket of do not feed larvae

J

jesper

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The last one is a nasty Dragonfly larva!
The small critters are mayfly larvae.
Can somone tell me what the rest is?

I bet my paras would see the dragonfly larva as a nice and juicy meal.
 
Hi Mike,
Thanks.
The followup will be: Can I use them as snacks for big newts?
 
No, they're so poisonous they're bites can even hurt humans!! They have the same effect as a bee sting, they even eat small gold fish, I've caught them doing it in my pond. I feed them all kinds of stuff in the summer, ants, flies, spiders, and even watch it's fun to watch them hunt, especially the big ones (2-4cm).
 
As Ben says, the water boatmen are dangerous, but the mayfly larvae are good for adult aquatic newts (wouldn't trust them with very small larvae though).
 
The first are lesser water boatmen, Corixa spp.. They are not predatory and feed on detritus and plant material. The second is a so-called "greater" water boatman, Notonecta spp.. The dragonfly larva looks like a species of Aeshna, or possibly Anax (if memory serves though, I don't believe Anax are found in Sweden, so it's probably a species of Aeshna).

The mayfly larva is a trickier question. It's not Emphemera. I think it's probably Cloeon.

What I don't know about pond life hasn't been discovered by science :p.

And while I'm here, the contents of your bucket are all fine for feeding to newts, except for the greater water boatman/men and the dragonfly larva.
 
By the way, the greater water boatman could conceivably hurt you, so be careful with it.
 
Water boatmen are fun to have around if the newts don't eat them. I kept one in my tank for about a month or so. I think they eat plant matter and algae.
 
yeh beware of the greater waterboatmen, i had a nasty experience with one of those
errr.gif
 
Guess what I found in my apartment today?


A big fly that looks suspiciously like the mayfly larvae in my copepod/daphnia culture!
lol.gif
 
Just wanted to say that I had LOADS of mayflies in my apartment for weeks, they liked my white curtains for moulding on. They mould A LOT.
 
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