I've got HYDRAS!

[InvisibleTouch]

I set up a new small fishtank recently, trying out the natural-style design as outlined in books like Ecology of the Planted Aquarium - that is, a soil substrate, no filtration, natural light from the window, and plants as oxegenators. Putting everything on a natural cycle rather than relying on high-tech. I'm not really planning to add fish, but want to use it to raise live food such as daphnia. I already have a few tiny daphnia that must have come in with the plants. But today I saw something especially neat - a hydra! Looking more closely, I found a second one. Little tiny transparent tentacled cnidarians. I was disproportionately pleased to see them, like it was a big deal. But hey - these days I take my enjoyment where I can.

(They're probably eating my daphnia as we speak.)

[Kali]

1. Cool

how big of a tank? What kind of plants?

[InvisibleTouch]

5. Only a 5.5-gallon.

Plants are Brazilian pennywort (insert obligatory bad joke here: "How many is a brazilian?") and hornwort, and a floating something-or-other I gathered at a local pond. Not duckweed, slightly bigger.

Plenty of snails, also, because I scooped some gravel from my tropical community tank, and it's full of trumpet snails.

Maybe someday I'll add a Siamese fighting fish, but he would, of course, eat the hydras. Law of nature and all.

[WTF cubed]

2. Have you called Orkin?

That doesn't sound good...

[InvisibleTouch]

6. Yeah, most aquarists consider them a pest...

...but I'm odd like this. :)

[TZ]

3. hydras are cool..

probably have a lot of nice paramecium and amoebas in there as well. I love those types of critters..although I have really bad memories of daphnia from a an annoying project in college in aquatic biology..every day even on holidays had to come in and take care of the daphnia...:eyes:

[InvisibleTouch]

7. I should feel that way about Drosophila.

Endless undergraduate honors project in the Drosophila room working with several species. None the less I still like them. I'm hoping to start several live-food cultures for my critters, and wingless Drosophila will probably be among them.

[krispos42]

4. Oh, they have a cream for that now

Another miracle from Pfizer!!!!!!

:rofl:








Congrats, though. I can't take care of eithe fish or plants....