[gabi.loraine]

There are these white flecks on my floating plants. At first I didn't think anything of them and now of course they're everywhere. I've taken these magnified photos and I swear they look like they're... dead bugs...? They don't move... that I can tell. I tried shaking them onto the water and some did come off but mostly they're just stuck there motionless? Could it be molting of some sort?

The betta was only introduced yesterday.

Other than the fact that they're unsightly... should I worry?

 

[gabi.loraine]

From the photos I was actually able to tell there are some live ones there, that are green... and I've been picking them off and throwing them into the water and the fish is eating them ... but yeah... they're super tiny and there's a lot of them... and their little molts/corpses are littering all of my beautiful plants...

 

[mistergreen]

oh, I see it. They're aphids. They're plant vampires.

 

[Michael]

And excellent betta food!

 

[gabi.loraine]

Fun times…

I’m reading older posts and … so many solutions. Not sure about getting a spider or eating them myself. Probably will try to drown them.

Continually impressed by the biodiversity here…

 

[11thEarlOfMars]

I found tons of these on the water lettuce I used to have. It inexplicably got yucky and wilted, and when I removed it I discovered tiny green bugs all over the leaves. So I bet that the aphids did them in, at least in part. (Ironically, we have tons of ladybugs living in the shrubs just outside, maybe the aphids fled to the aquarium to escape the carnage? 😁 ) Now I'm annoyed with myself for not thinking to feed them to the fish. If there's a next time, though... those aphids will become part of the circle of natural aquarium life for sure!

 

[gabi.loraine]

I found tons of these on the water lettuce I used to have. It inexplicably got yucky and wilted, and when I removed it I discovered tiny green bugs all over the leaves. So I bet that the aphids did them in, at least in part. (Ironically, we have tons of ladybugs living in the shrubs just outside, maybe the aphids fled to the aquarium to escape the carnage? 😁 ) Now I'm annoyed with myself for not thinking to feed them to the fish. If there's a next time, though... those aphids will become part of the circle of natural aquarium life for sure!

The thing is … how. They’re super small… the water surface of my bowl feels too large, the fish is smol and not seeing them/ swimming fast enough to get them before they climb back onto a plant…
Im thinking of moving all of the plants to another bucket, removing all of the bugs/molts very carefully leaf by leaf with like a clean paintbrush maybe, move the clean plants back… maybe bring the fish to the bug tank to eat and then move him back?
I have salvinia so that’s a lot of little leafs… and delicate roots… it would probably be easier to throw them out and get new ones but I’ve seen them grow double in size since I got them and would feel like such a waste 😫

 

[gabi.loraine]

could I… turn the plants upside down?

 

[gabi.loraine]

I tried feeding them to the fish by putting him in a little cup and then giving them to him one by one and it was working but honestly it was going to take so long to do it that way, and mainly, I worry that I wouldn't be good at catching them all and it wouldn't solve my problem at all because they'd promptly just come back.
So I've submerged all of my floating plants... how long should I leave them here?
The plants I have are [pictured above]

• floating lettuce (two kinds)
• salvinia
• duckweed

They're all kind of crammed carefully placed in a cup that I poked holes into which is what I use to fill my bowl without disturbing the substrate... weighed down with a big rock. I put the rock in a bag because it's from the ocean and I don't want to deal with it contaminating the water...

On another subject I think my fish is either too young to have a huge appetite and hunt larvae and bugs all day or maybe he's lazy or used to being fed at the store when he lived in a little cup? He is very little and the bowl has like 5gal and a thriving population of animalia, lmao

 

[dwalstad]

Give him time.