Uninvited guests...daphnia?

[TJ]

Can anybody identify these teeny-tiny critters? I found them in my Pachytriton brevipes tank while I was looking through a macro lens trying to focus.

 

[TJ]

At first, I was ecstatic, thinking my brevipes pair had "spawned" and that these were newly hatched larvae

...but they are way to small to be anything of the sort. Are they daphnia? I've never dealt with daphnia so am not quite sure what they look like. But I can't see how daphnia could have been introduced to this tank as I haven't added any plants. The only thing I can imagine is that they came in with tubifex, which I occasionally feed to my brevipes. They're definitely not brine shrimp hatchlings, though they move similarly.

 

[martin]

These are Cyclops. A small crustacean that has a similar lifecycle as Daphnias.I cant come any closer than to the genus. There are about 10.000 species in this group...

Martin

 

[ralf]

They're copepods, Tim.

Ralf

 

[TJ]

Thanks Ralf & Martin! Copepods, cyclops...different things? Whatever, as long as they're harmless, they're welcome

Just don't want any harm to come to my 2 brevipes, which are absolutely precious!

 

[ralf]

Hi Tim,
same thing, "copepods" includes "Cyclops". Some info on their biology here:

http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/zoomorphology/Biology.html

Ralf

 

[kaysie]

copepods is a division of crustaceans... i'm pretty sure they're edible... so if you have some larvae, now you've got some food!

 

[john]

Most people who culture daphnia can't help culturing cyclops too - these guys get in everywhere. They do make good food, though some of them are predatory (usually the bigger species - you'd know them if you saw them).

 

[jennifer]

I was feeding copepods to larvae last year, as I netted a large quantity at a pond. The larvae ate them, but had a harder time catching them than they do with daphnia. No harm to your newts, and no harm throwing them in with your larvae for food.