# Ostracoda- seed shrimp



## Laki

Found these in my assassin tank. I think it's these. They are yet too small to tell if there is any pattern on their backs. But They swim and stuff the same way. They are mostly in the roots of my floating salvinia in my assassin tank, but not the betta tank. 
Does anyone know where they heck they come from?! And what can I do about them? I kind of want to see if I can culture them for betta food but not if these things get out of hand. I only have 2 bettas. AND when I get cherry shrimp, will they eat these?
Thanks, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DvCDHHLpcI << this is the vid. Skip ahead to see slow mo and shell patterns.


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## Laki

someone must know what care these things need?

They cleaned all the algae off my assassin's shells- which is great bc the assassins are going to their new home next week lol.


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## MSG

*Those things are armored like tanks.*

I spotted at least half a dozen in my fry tank for over 2 months, the little tic tac bettas would try to eat them, but would spit them out every time. 

I don't know why you would want to culture them, but I doubt the bettas would eat them over pellets. 

If you provide these things sufficient food, they should reproduce on their own since there's no predators.


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## Laki

Hmm.. I discovered them a couple nights ago and yesterday found out they are actually seed shrimp. 
Soooo, thanks for letting me know that bettas won't eat them!! I was actually wondeing how I would get the things in a syringe for feeding. My bettas are so used to attacking the syringe for bloodworms, and the water surface is so full of salvinia that I bet I would just introduce the shrimp things into my tank. Don't know if I want that yet.. Need to find out more about them. 

On planetinverts website, there was a pic of a RCS looking at a seed shrimp. Do shrimp eat them, do you know? Because I am getting some cherry shrimp next week or so.


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## MSG

Unless the shrimps can crack the shells I don't think so. My larger bettas might eat the seed shrimp, but I have yet to test it out. The juvies wouldn't last long if I unleashed one of my larger bettas in their tank.

There's currently at least 5-6 adult amphipoda aka scuds in the fry tank. Greenish & brown ones. 

It wouldn't hurt to keep the s-shrimp by in a window jar in case you need a backup mini algae clean up crew.

Do some research on whether or not they can ravage your plants. I don't know much about them other than I've seen a few in my tank before.


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## Laki

Ok thanks! Actually, I suspect they arose out of nowhere in the assassin tank because that tank was in the kitchen window where it grew algae. And the roots of the salvinia had a lot of algae. They have it mostly cleaned up, I like how efficient they are. I would like to find out more about them, what would eat them because they;re so small I don't want to raise them for nothing and already my population has grown in just a day.
Skuds.. That's a new one. I'll go look them up, I don't know about all these aqaurium bugs! I'm happy to know that s shrimp are present in healthy tanks though, right?


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## Laki

Ok.. I have a problem with seed shrimp transferring from salvinia probably into my shrimp tank. My RCS don't seem to eat them and they're everywhere in my shrimp tank. 
Any ideas of how to get rig of them? Because I don't want them to be a problem when my females start to berry (their saddles are moving down now)


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