Springtails in my 'Fish' Tank - Podura aquatica Nashua, New Hampshire, USA March 2, 2008
In my bedroom, I have a 10-gallon aquarium set up for any interesting freshwater critters I find around town. Despite calling it my 'fish tank', there are no fish in it; instead the aquarium is inhabited by fresh water snails, tubifex worms, hydras, cyclopes, and insect nymphs.
Due to the regular lighting and low consumption rate due to a lack of vertebrates, the plants have overgrown and formed mats of aquatic mosses, filamentous algae and duckweed (much to the snail's delight, though they don't seem particularly fond of mosses). The past couple visits I've made back home, I found the mosses to be sending up sporophytes above the water & around them and on the walls of the tank to be tiny blue springtails.
I suspect the large, elongate ones are Podura aquatica, but the smaller globular one's I have no idea as to the identity of.
Images of this individual: tag all Contributed by Jonas Insinga on 20 March, 2008 - 1:08pm Last updated 29 April, 2008 - 6:23pm |