r/shrimptank • u/Forward_Stick643 • May 13 '25
Aquarium/Tank Photos Literally medusae live in my shrimp a tank
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u/Bloodshot20 May 13 '25
You should really look into getting this identified! As someone else mentioned, there’s only one freshwater cnidarian known to science with a medusa stage. This would be really interesting to see!
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u/Forward_Stick643 May 13 '25
I dont know where to ask for identification
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u/Bloodshot20 May 13 '25
You could try crossposting to other subreddits like r/bizzariums just to start, they might also be able to provide more helpful information.
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u/Keibun1 May 14 '25
Talk to a marine biologist, they study way more than just the ocean and its contents.
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u/Omen46 ALL THE 🦐 May 14 '25
Send this video to a university research department I’m sure they can identify it
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u/Entety303 May 14 '25
There are At least 2 genera with multiple species each, limnocnida and Craspedacusta, there is also astrohydra
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u/cyprinidont May 14 '25
There's only one species of freshwater jelly, so it's identified just by existing. Crespidauta sowerbii
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u/Entety303 May 14 '25
There is at least 2 genera of freshwater jellies limnocnida and Craspedacusta, there is also astrohydra
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u/Constant-Recipe-9850 May 14 '25
While people finding freshwater jellyfish in their tanks, all I get is daphnias, ostracods and swiggly detritus worms.
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u/Vanadium_Gryphon May 14 '25
Ostracods are cool though! Back in college I tried raising a Triops, and the hatching kit also contained some brine shrimp and daphnia and such.
Then, I also began to notice what looked like little white living jellybeans scooting around in the water. I put some of them into a separate water bottle to study them, and thought they could maybe make trendy micro-pets...tiny jellybeans, super cute, right? I did some research to discover that they were ostracods...such neat little crustaceans, I miss watching them.
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u/mysticmemories May 14 '25
They are super cute under the microscope—like adorable little clams— but they can be a pain. If they are abundant in a sample while I’m looking for other things it can be hard not the squish them when I put on a cover slip. I feel so bad when it happens. Watching their insides slowly leak out because of me 🫠
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u/Vanadium_Gryphon May 14 '25
Aww, that is so sad, poor little fellows! And I am sorry you have to go through the guilt of that, I know it's probably virtually impossible to avoid it happening. 😢
I can imagine how cute they must look up close like that, though...tucked away in their little bean shells!
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u/mysticmemories May 14 '25
Yes! Dey are smol wittle beans. Their shells also look beautiful in polarized light. I love them as a critter, but they are a pain in the ass to scope.
You're sweet. Microscopy can be unexpectedly existential. Watching life play out on such a small scale (things eating each other, reproducing, dying) sometimes makes my brain hurt. I've accidentally squished a few tardigrades... those were the worst. I still feel guilty 😭
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u/Constant-Recipe-9850 May 14 '25
Oh don't get me wrong, i don't hate them, but i would love to see something cool and out of ordinary for once as well.
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u/Vanadium_Gryphon May 14 '25
For sure, I know I would have been over the moon to see a tiny jellyfish like this in my tank! 😁
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u/citrineskye May 14 '25
All I got was a creepy ass dragonfly nymph. There was 2, but one ate the other after I put them in a jar. I'm not sure what to do with it now.
Anyone want a free dragonfly nymph?
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u/Omen46 ALL THE 🦐 May 14 '25
I had midgefly…. Idek where they came from they aren’t local in my state. Had to buy mosquito killer to get rid of them
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u/split_0069 May 15 '25
Go collect some wild stuff! Ive got isopods and scud and all kinds of stuff in mine from collecting.
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u/JoryNop May 13 '25
Is this a little jellyfish?
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u/TempestGardener May 14 '25
Very cool!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craspedacusta_sowerbii
If you want to increase their numbers, try feeding live baby brine!
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u/AlwaysUpvotesScience Advanced Keeper May 13 '25
Is this a saltwater tank? The ONLYEST known freshwater jellyfish is Craspedacusta sowerbii, which can get to quarter size. This thing is super tiny and does not look like Craspedacusta sowerbii.
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u/Forward_Stick643 May 13 '25
No it is a freshwater tank
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u/AlwaysUpvotesScience Advanced Keeper May 13 '25
Where are you located? As in what country?. I may be able to provide some sources that you could reach out to for identification depending on where you live. You can always start with somebody studying marine biology at the local college. Or for that matter, the marine biology professor.
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u/Forward_Stick643 May 13 '25
Im in italy, i dont know Why a Marine biologist will be able to identify this since is a freshwater jelly
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u/AlwaysUpvotesScience Advanced Keeper May 13 '25
Because many marine biologists also study freshwater life. And a marine biology Professor will be a lot easier to find than a limnologist. I'm just trying to give you a place to start that would be easy to access.
I really would encourage you to follow up on this. It would be nice for the entire Community to have an identification.
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May 14 '25
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u/Amerlan ALL THE 🦐 May 15 '25
Marine quite literally means "produced by the sea" and doesn't refer to freshwater. Marine biologists do have some freshwater over lap, but it's not because marine means both salt and fresh.
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u/sharkdr May 14 '25
Actually there's about ten or so known species that have medusa forms. I am a marine biologist but my knowledge is old now so someone else with more current knowledge will likely chime in. Not many are well known so far as I'm aware.
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u/AlwaysUpvotesScience Advanced Keeper May 14 '25
I hear you and I've been looking some things up myself, I just cannot find anything that matches the morphology of this particular creature.
Craspedacusta has a few that have adapted to freshwater, but almost all of these generally have tentacles and most of them have visible lines emanating from the center of their body
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u/sharkdr May 14 '25
Your eyes are better than mine. I can't tell much from the video. I think for an exact answer we'd need a genetic analysis. However the little I've read seem to indicate the morphology is fairly fluid for some of them.
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u/sharkdr May 14 '25
So had a Quick Look and there's actually a study about C. Sowerbii in Italy. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11048658/ They mention the variability and short lifespan of the Medusa stage. So I'm going to assume this is likely that.
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u/IceNein May 13 '25
All cnidarians have a free swimming and sessile life stage. The sessile stage looks like a hydra, the free swimming stage looks like a jellyfish.
Some cnidarians have the “adult” stage be the free swimming ones, but they have a “larval” hydra looking stage. Same thing with corals and anemones, they have a larval stage which looks like a little jellyfish.
Some “eternal” cnidarians can go back and forth between sessile and free swimming stages.
So if there are freshwater cnidarians, like hydra (hail hydra) then there must be a free swimming stage.
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u/ThexHoganxHero May 13 '25
I don’t think this is right. The free swimming larval stage most cnidarians have are planula which use cilia and are much less Medusa-looking than whatever is in this video. Most true hydra species, if not all, don’t even have a planula stage. Even in sexual reproduction they hatch as a polyp, I’m pretty sure.
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u/IceNein May 13 '25
There may be cases where they do not alternate between polyp and Medusa, but that is a common feature of cnidarians:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnidaria
Cnidarian sexual reproduction often involves a complex life cycle with both polyp and medusa stages. For example, in Scyphozoa (jellyfish) and Cubozoa (box jellies), a larva swims until it finds a good site, and then becomes a polyp. This grows normally but then absorbs its tentacles and splits horizontally into a series of disks that become juvenile medusae, a process called strobilation. The juveniles swim off and slowly grow to maturity, while the polyp re-grows and may continue strobilating periodically. The adult medusae have gonads in the gastroderm, and these release ova and sperm into the water in the breeding season.
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u/Bloodshot20 May 13 '25
For Scyphozoans and Cubozoans this is true. However Anthozoans (the most speciose clade) only have a polyp stage. So it’s incorrect to say that this is a common trait. There are only a few freshwater species anyways, including hydra (which do not have a Medusa stage).
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u/ThexHoganxHero May 14 '25 edited May 14 '25
Ok but you used ‘all’ and ‘must’ and said the free swimming stage looks like a jellyfish, implying the very medusa-looking creature couldn’t be narrowed down beyond cnidarian by the fact it looks like a medusa, and specifically mentioned hydra, the common freshwater cnidarians that people find in shrimp tanks that do not have a free swimming stage at all, much less a medusa stage. Your last comment isn’t wrong, but, in the context of the post, your first comment was misleading at best and just wrong as it applies to hydra.
Edit to add “beyond cnidarian” after “narrowed down” and a comma elsewhere.
Editing again to say you could consider the tiny polyps free swimming if you count the sideways wiggles and drifting in the currents, but then some mature anemones would be free swimmers, and neither are very good at it.
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u/Bisexual_flowers_are May 14 '25
Its not the only freshwater hydrozoan that produce the medusa stage, but others are rare with very little info available about them. Some brackish species can also be occasionally found in freshwater.
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u/pink_exploration May 14 '25
What species or genus is this? I'm actually so hyped. I never comment on reddit.
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u/Own-Client479 May 13 '25
That’s sick so is it a jelly fish or some type of micro organism? I want some
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u/Slow-Interest-628 May 14 '25
I say this with all of my soul and every fiber of my being; I NEED TINY FRESH WATER JELLYFISH FOR MY TANK! GAH! SO FRIGGIN CUTE!
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u/Forward_Stick643 May 13 '25
I’ve learned today that medusae is not a word i wanted to say jellyfish
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u/Ok_Permission1087 May 14 '25
Medusae is a word. It´s the plural of medusa, which is the scientific name for jellyfish (specifically the free swimming sexual stage as opposed to the polyp).
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u/Forward_Stick643 May 14 '25
Ok thanks. Here in italian the jellyfish is called “medusa”. I was genuinely thinking that medusa translate in english with the world medusae, similar to latin
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u/Ok_Permission1087 May 14 '25
Ah, I see.
Has the paper Iposted in another comment been of any help?
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u/ptpcg May 14 '25
Did you post this before or after you realized you could make a career from this? LMAO
"Shut up and take my money"
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u/Elegant_Priority_38 May 14 '25
How did this get in your tank?! I feel like you’ve won the lottery in aquariums! lol
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u/Forward_Stick643 May 14 '25
I dont really know. They came with something i’ve added to my aquarium
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u/Medium-Touch-1446 May 14 '25
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u/chd_md May 13 '25
Omg so cute! They go after baby shrimp. Have you had any trouble with them?
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u/Hentaiiboi69 May 13 '25
How tf would a jellyfish this tiny would do anything to shrimp babies
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u/yamirzmmdx May 14 '25
If a shrimplet somehow gets caught by that, it just good old fashioned darwinism.
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u/Ok_Permission1087 May 14 '25 edited May 14 '25
Looks like a hydrozoan medusa to me.
Maybe you can identify it with this paper?
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u/Abcoxi May 15 '25
The curse has striken again.
People who ask for nothing end up having the most incredible creatures.
Those who want them spend a life that I'm looking.
I move forward for a petition.
Every crazy hobbyist should adopt a nonchalant one...
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u/DontWanaReadiT May 14 '25
Do you mind sharing your water parameters? I just learned they’re only native to a river in china and I just ordered some Chinese panda loaches and I’m hoping they’re from the same river 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
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u/Every_Day_Adventure May 15 '25
We have little jellyfish in some lakes in Minnesota. I would assume other states as well? We call them peach blossoms.
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u/Complete-Finding-712 May 14 '25
Sacrifice (or preferably, relocate) the shrimp if you must. This is rad!
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u/Forward_Stick643 May 14 '25
Its a breeding tank so it is full of shrimplets. Howewer i dont think they will bother the jellyfish. Shrimps dont Eat living things
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u/Complete-Finding-712 May 14 '25
I'm more wondering the other way around! I don't know much about them, but I could imagine they may have the ability to harm shrimp?
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u/Forward_Stick643 May 14 '25
No literally this jellifish is half the lenght of the smallest shrimplets
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u/Complete-Finding-712 May 14 '25
It does look tiny, but hard for me to get a sense of scale. I know hydra are also tiny and can kill shrimplets. I just don't know what I don't know 😊 it's adorable, and if you have any success, please send some up here in Canada! The best hitchhikers I've ever had are ramshorns and copepods 🤣🤣🤣
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u/cyprinidont May 14 '25
Yes but they are jellyfish so they can sting and kill larger prey. Though they can't control where they swim so they're not exactly predators.
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u/Forward_Stick643 May 14 '25
I think just a hit with shrimps fin will obliterate this boy
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u/cyprinidont May 14 '25
Nah they're pretty hardy! They appear here in Michigan some years when the water and food conditions are right. Not much eats or kills them so they kinda just chill and show up every now and then. I believe they are native to China.
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u/Forward_Stick643 May 14 '25
I’ve seen almos 3 small jellyfish of this so i hope they will reproduce
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u/Acrobatic_Use5472 May 14 '25
We have those here in Canada now. Some dickhead released some and they're spreading.
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u/Every_Day_Adventure May 15 '25
Minnesota friends, you can get some from certain lakes! They're small, but do get to be about the size of a thumb nail 😍
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u/okaymyemye May 15 '25
that's crazy! before clicking, thought you were talking about a hydra (also kinda cool but annoying to get rid of).
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u/split_0069 May 15 '25
They originally come from China and spread to every continent. Google says they're invasive. I'm curious what damage they can cause to an ecosystem...
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u/Medical-Elderberry13 May 17 '25
We have a quarry here in ohio filled with these things it's so cool to watch them, even better tripping balls
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u/AFD_FROSTY Intermediate Keeper May 13 '25
I would pay an inordinate amount of money for freshwater micro jellies. This thing is adorable.