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unidentifiable fry

23 16:47:07

Question
QUESTION: I have some strange fry.  Any ideas?  

They appear to be baby fish but none like limited few I've raised.  Don't look like goldfish fry and certainly not from a live bearer like mosquito fish.  I know what mosquito larvae look like and it's not that.

    How this happened

I have a partially filled pool I keep goldfish and mosquito fish in.  I also keep a matured 50 gal tank set up at all times so if there were an emergency and I had to drain pool quickly, I'd have a place to put fish.

Sometimes I use tank as hospital tank for new or sick fish.

I recently I put 2 corys, 2 plecos, 2 kissing gourami and 3 Danios I bought out of sympathy because I knew they were sick and thought I might be able to save them.  Within 2 weeks, lost all but corys which I then moved to a regular tank.

A few days later, after heavy wind, I was using pool net to skim debris off top of pool.  I saw what looked to be fish eggs on it so I just stuck it in the 50 tank in case they were goldfish eggs.

A week or so later when I went to clean up the tank, I saw all these long little things with big eyes clinging to the sides of the tank.

If not goldfish, that leaves the corys, plecos, gourami and Danios who had been in tank prior to me dropping net it.  

This seems unlikely since they were sick and most had died plus none of these easy to breed in first place not to mention the odds of getting a breeding pair within week of purchase and all were quite young.

I can come up with two things

    1.  Through no fault of my own, something rare happened, or

    2.  These could be something weird like dragon fly larvae since I have seen them around the pond before but that was last year, I haven't seen any this year.

You may post this if you wish but since I'm not able to be on internet often, would you be so kind as to email me at slgroell@yahoo.com if you have any ideas.

Thank you most sincerely
Sandra Groell


ANSWER: Hey, since you requested an email, i'll send one. but the site requires i reply to all messages here too as well. So, off to yahoo mail!

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: I have no problem with replying on site.  I got email but only with my question repeated...no answer and no answer here at the site.

What am I doing wrong?  (no computer whiz me!)  


ANSWER: Hey again

essentially, i said it's probably dragonfly larvae, but i cant say for sure. It's pretty odd that you have mystery fry! I'd say get a barb and let it eat em all up, but where's the fun in figuring out what it is?

Let me know of any new developments!

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Thank you for response!

Most of my fish would love the job but can't do that until I'm sure they're not fish offspring. Plus I, too, have my fair share of curiosity.

Because I didn't know what they were and I did see a few mosquito larvae, I sealed top of tank so I didn't end up with a mosquito breeding ground.

Could I ask you a favor since I'm as close to internet clueless as they come.  Do you know an encyclopedia type  site showing pictures of fish fry.

Again thanks much.  

Answer
curiosity could kill the fish! be careful you're not breeding something dangerous, and if you are... well... a nice bottle of bleach can come in handy! I cant think of anything dangerous that has fry lavae, but i dont know everything!

I did some looking, and the best i found was wikipedia. Although, i didnt do an extensive search, between google images, and wikipedia i found several pictures of every type of fry i could think of in 15 minutes! key words like animal fry, fish fry, bug fry, etc helped narrow the searches.

let me know if you make any progress in IDing them!