SMALL BUGS UNDER MY LIGHT CANOPY, WHAT ARE THEY?

[noah body]

I have had these small greenish looking bugs all over the underside of
my light canopy for years now, well since I brought home water plants. I
have gotten rid of the plants because I did not have time to clean the
filters because of my job sending me all over the country. . . anyway's now
that I have purchased a good quality digital camera with macro, I have just
taken a pic of the bugs walking over a piece of half submerged wood stick in
the tank, and also have taken a high quality macro video of the bugs moving.
Could someone please tell me what they are and more importantly, could
someone also tell me if they are harmful to the fish in anyway. I explained
this story to the local fish store but all he said was that it's a sign of a
great ecosystem in my tank. . . maybe.
For someone to answer this question I don't think that I should have to
explain the total setup of my tank, except to say that it is an established
80 gallon freshwater community tank that gets overfed cause I still can't
quite figure out if I'm giving my guys enough food.
I know enough to NOT post pictures here so could someone please send me
their email address so that I could send you the pics or/and the video of
the bugs in/on my tank. Actually I'm quite happy with the quality of the
pics because you can actually count the legs on these bugs that seem to be a
couple of mil's in length. . . PS: The pics were taken at 5.1 megapixel, so
the file is like 2.5 meg to download.

Charlie
Nova Scotia, Canada

[Limnophile]

Could you post the pics to alt.binaries.aquaria ?


"noah body" > wrote
> Actually I'm quite happy with the quality of the
> pics because you can actually count the legs on these bugs that seem to be
> a
> couple of mil's in length. . . PS: The pics were taken at 5.1 megapixel,
> so
> the file is like 2.5 meg to download.
>
> Charlie
> Nova Scotia, Canada

[Mean_Chlorine]

Thusly "noah body" > Spake Unto All:

> I know enough to NOT post pictures here so could someone please send me
>their email address so that I could send you the pics or/and the video of
>the bugs in/on my tank. Actually I'm quite happy with the quality of the
>pics because you can actually count the legs on these bugs that seem to be a
>couple of mil's in length. . . PS: The pics were taken at 5.1 megapixel, so
>the file is like 2.5 meg to download.

Sure, send the image to me. My email works.

For future reference, you can use free programs like IrFanView to crop
the uninteresting parts of the picture so you only get the interesting
part left - that will make the file much, much, smaller.

[noah body]

Oh well .. one guy said that I have "aphids" , the other guy says I have
"springtails" ... oh well .. :)

Then again it's hard to tell cause the guy who told me about the
"springtail" also sent along some URL's to check it out in detail which
showed me that there are 6000 species of these bugs .. so I won't fret about
it. My wife has about 100 different plants in our house, so the bug could
have come from them.

PS: People come to our house and always notice how healthy the plants are
but I think I figured it out. I have 5 good sized aquariums in the house all
on different floors and I also make my own wine and beer, so there's an
abundance of C02 floating around, maybe that's it. ;)




"noah body" > wrote in message
...
>I have had these small greenish looking bugs all over the underside of
> my light canopy for years now, well since I brought home water plants. I
> have gotten rid of the plants because I did not have time to clean the
> filters because of my job sending me all over the country. . . anyway's
> now
> that I have purchased a good quality digital camera with macro, I have
> just
> taken a pic of the bugs walking over a piece of half submerged wood stick
> in
> the tank, and also have taken a high quality macro video of the bugs
> moving.
> Could someone please tell me what they are and more importantly, could
> someone also tell me if they are harmful to the fish in anyway. I
> explained
> this story to the local fish store but all he said was that it's a sign of
> a
> great ecosystem in my tank. . . maybe.
> For someone to answer this question I don't think that I should have
> to
> explain the total setup of my tank, except to say that it is an
> established
> 80 gallon freshwater community tank that gets overfed cause I still can't
> quite figure out if I'm giving my guys enough food.
> I know enough to NOT post pictures here so could someone please send me
> their email address so that I could send you the pics or/and the video of
> the bugs in/on my tank. Actually I'm quite happy with the quality of the
> pics because you can actually count the legs on these bugs that seem to be
> a
> couple of mil's in length. . . PS: The pics were taken at 5.1 megapixel,
> so
> the file is like 2.5 meg to download.
>
> Charlie
> Nova Scotia, Canada
>
>
>

[Mean_Chlorine]

Thusly "noah body" > Spake Unto All:

>Oh well .. one guy said that I have "aphids" , the other guy says I have
>"springtails" ... oh well .. :)

Your creatures are absolute, positively, 100% guaranteed to be
sprintails. Do a search on google for "springtail" or "collembola" and
you'll find images of animals almost identical to yours.

Aphids, on the other hand, look like this:
http://www.johnsonsflorists.com/aphids.html
and feed off living plants. Unlike springtails they are slow-moving
and can not jump, but may instead have wings.