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Hi all,

Earlier this evening I found this happy little chap wandering around the bottom of my tank. I managed to capture it and it is now sitting in a bowl of water in my kitchen at the moment while I work out what to do with him. I estimate he is about 2cm in length.

I assume it is a dragonfly larve or something similar. Can someone confirm and also let me know what to do with it.

While trying to get these photo's I noticed it did happen to eat a tiny tiny red worm like thing that I must have scooped up with the water from my tank. I have never noticed them before but they are so small you almost need a magnifying glass to see them, it was just lucky I put it in a white bowl and that the other thing decided to eat it!

Pic attached.

Yup, it's a dragonfly larva.

I assume I dont really want these things in my tank then? Or can I leave them as food for some of my fish?

I got a few tanks outdoors, and they are regularly visited by dragonflies to lay eggs

At first I tried to catch them, scare them and so on. However, this will not work anyway, and as these start life as a very ferrocious, but also tiny lavae, I realised they are just another addition to the fish diet

Last week I emtied the first of these tanks, and I did find 1 dragonfly larva, at half an inch or so. I also found over 30 fry of the fishes, Xiphophorus nezuhuatl (typing errors are unavoidable in this name), at a smaller size

I don't woory so much about them anymore

Hey,

they are really fascinating creatures. Put a plant in this bowl and try feeding it bloodworms - not to much, just few worms a day .

I actually think it is a damselfly, which is a smaller dragonfly. It would be eaten by larger fishes but poses a threat to fry & very small species.

If you wanted to keep it & watch it hatch, it'll need something like bloodworm as worton suggests & a stick or plant protruding out from the water for it to climb out on when the time is right - it is absolutely fascinating to watch, but does take several hours & usually happens in darkness.

I had something like this with some fish from the lfs. I managed to catch it and had it in a jam jar for a while, until I released it into a pond.It may have been a dragonfly larvae, but I don't know how it got into the lfs. From the importers or the UK? It could have been anything, but at least there's only one near where I live!

That one looks like a dragonfly - one of the more squat varieties rather than the bigger ones.

The first creature is a damsel fly nymph, not a dragon fly nypmh.

The second bug shown is one of the squat bodied species of crawling dragon fly nymphs, Gomphus spp, is my best guess. The other types are cigar shaped and are capable of jet propulsion. I tie flies that imitate all these guys for fly fishing trout lakes. Always a good bet for a big fish. They are capable aquatic piscavores.