vicky

It's a shame you are so afraid of nature. In my experience, especially in planted tanks, you will have these. If you have something that eats them you may not see them, but remove the predator and after a time you see these return. They are a healthy part of a natural aquarium. Bleach and copper? Why not just go with plastic plants.

aquaman555

Not sure if these are the exact thing I had in my shrimp tank for a while, but I had them like crazy for a while, but do not see them anymore. Blue pearls and a mystery snail, all was fine when they were in there.

jackgood

You could try google-ing Electric Charcoal Starter

Just be careful, those things were designed to ignite charcoal. You may blow past 70 C, melt the silicon in your tank and watch as all four walls comically fall at the same time and dump scalding hot water everywhere. (Protip: Do this outside. )

And regarding bleach, I'm not an expert and I'm too lazy at this point to look it up but, while the bleach will most likely kill the live ostracods it may not kill the eggs. And it just takes a few missed eggs to get the whole ball rolling again.

Personally, I'm in agreement with everyone else. Those ostracods are a sign of a good ecosystem. If there's an overabundance of ostracods it means there's an overabundance of food for them. Correct the food problem and the population will go down.

davemonkey

I would not bother trying to kill them. Short of baking your aquarium in an oven, you will never get rid of them entirely...they will always come back. Not to mention that anything you place in your tank from somewhere else could have them (or eggs).

Pygmy sunfish relish these creatures, as do bettas and I would guess most tetras. Even if they don't eat them out of existence, they at least will be kept low enough (the population) where you never/hardly see them and the ones that do live will help you control algae.

PSUFan

I believe I have the same creatures in my bowl. I've got a 2-gallon natural-planted Walstad-method shrimp bowl with 8 Red Cherry Shrimp that's been going for 3 or 4 months now. Recently, one of the berried females had her eggs hatch. I had some very tiny shrimp in my tank, but I noticed something even smaller that seemed more active than the baby shrimp. I was trying to figure out if they were just far younger shrimp or if some insect had perhaps laid eggs in my bowl and they had coincidentally hatched with the shrimp! Thankfully, I just stumbled across your post. I'm now fairly certain they are ostracods.

I attached 2 pictures for identification (please forgive the horrible photo quality, but I was trying to get a really close shot and my lens is not that great).

I'm not worried about having them in the bowl if that is all they are, but is there any way to help cull the population a bit and keep it under control without harming my RCS? I have tons of these little buggers, and I just don't want them to become an eyesore and detract from the rest of the bowl if the population booms even more. With a bowl this small and no filtration, I realize my options are probably quite limited.

Thanks!

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HeyPK

Yes, they are ostracods. They shouldn't harm your shrimp unless they get very numerous. Normally they eat algae. If they get overpopulated, they may start chewing on your plants. They can "bother" snails to death when very numerous.