# How does one deal with dragonfly larva



## faizal (18 Mar 2012)

I killed two of them in my tank. I don't know how they got in. Help please.


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## darren636 (18 Mar 2012)

i just watch with awe as they kill everything and eat it. they must have come in on new plants or live food.


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## Iain Sutherland (18 Mar 2012)

i had them after using plants from asia, tried to keep one alive in a vase with heat and air but only managed for 3 weeks.  They ate about 40 shrimp before i caught the last one!!
only use aquafleur and tropica now.


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## faizal (18 Mar 2012)

darren636 said:
			
		

> i just watch with awe as they kill everything and eat it.





			
				easerthegeezer said:
			
		

> They ate about 40 shrimp before i caught the last one!!



Ooookay,....    Can dosing with Excel kill them?


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## O'Neil (18 Mar 2012)

I did a quick Google and one guy said that they are ambush predators and he simply snipped them in half with scissors when he found one sitting still.


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## faizal (18 Mar 2012)

Thank you Porksword. Yeah I saw a couple of them in action on youtube. Very scary looking buggers. That's exactly how I got rid of mine. They have a whitish transluscent body which makes it hard to spot them until they begin to move. They look like something out of the Aliens movie, really. 

I have been trying to see if there are more of them hiding in the tank but either they are too smart or I have managed to get rid of them. Do they harm otocinclus? My tank's at its diatomic algal stage currently & I was kind of thinking if I could start adding the otos this weekend.


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## Iain Sutherland (18 Mar 2012)

otos should be fine, mine just took shrimp fry i guess, it wasnt until they were bigger i noticed them then they did the really damage.


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## sparkyweasel (18 Mar 2012)

If they are whitish and transparent, I guess they are quite small. If they are Dragonfly nymphs (nymphs not larvae) they can grow to 2" or 3" and can certainly eat _Otocinclus_, small tetras etc as they grow. 
If they are small it is hard to tell them from Stonefly and Alderfly nymphs, which are smaller and less dangerous.


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## faizal (19 Mar 2012)

Yup. They were about 2-3 cm alright. I didn't spot any last night or this morning. I hope I've managed to get them all. Creepy little buggers. I am gonna keep on looking for them. They ARE NOT getting my fishes.  
 

One thing or the other always.

I am due for adding fishes till the weekend anyways. Wish me luck guys.

I so badly want to get tropica plants but it's so difficult to obtain them. The nearest Tropica dealer is in Thailand and they don't have a website. Just a phone number. When I tried to call them, the people attending to the phone call couldn't speak a word of english & they either kept passing the phone from one person to the other. On my last try the woman just hung up  

I don't understand why Tropica doesn't have a dealer in Malaysia or singapore.There are so many of us enthusiasts here. Very disappointing.


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## faizal (23 Mar 2012)

Man! I just killed another one today. it was resting on one of the drift woods. I cut it into two pieces with scissors    

I don't know how I am going to add shrimps to clean up the diatoms in my tank when I am having creepy little nymphs / larvae running around in the tank. The good news is that it was much smaller than the previous three. 

Suppose if i add a betta fish,..would he be able to hunt them down? Suppose I do add a betta,...would he attack my other future tank inhabitants like yamato shrimps, otos and cardinal tetras.


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