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I am feeding "frozen" cyclops, "frozen" baby brine shrimp, and powdered flake food... And for some strange reason I have found live cyclops in my tank.

At first not knowing what they were I did some research, I came across the usual suspects (planaria, nemetodes ect...). After ruling these out I started to look at what I was knowingly introducing into my tank ("frozen" brine shrimp naupli and cyclops). I was gobsmacked... They looked like a picture of cyclops on a web page infront of me . So on a trip to my LFS last week I told their most knowledgeable employee this and he laughed it off and told me that I had a case of planaria?

Over the weekend I caught some of these little critters and took them to my LFS who confirmed that they were indeed cyclops (the Y shape of the female gave it away). An apology and a ten % discount later... I felt quite smug.

Knowing this, how is it possible that they got into my tank? And can they be resurrected frankenstein-style after being frozen?

I have looked for logical explanations and so far none have come to my attention.

something like 99% of water out of our taps contain microscopic organisms and eggs of such things, i have a 2.5g tank set up with shrimp in it and i've noticed nematodes and cyclops in it, i don't mind, give the baby shrimp something to eat

i suppose there's a slim chance that the frozen cysts of the cyclops that you're feeding have hatched, but i would think the freezing would rupture them

I don't think the problem originates from tap water, though I do think that it is plausible that frozen eggs may be reanimated. Thanks for your response.

Another thing to mantion is that there may be 20-30 live cyclops in the tank at any one time, the zebs seem to pounce on them occasionally.

Can cyclops harm fish? Do they feed on pl*co eggs?