Last week in our Koi pond i noticed these tadpole like things. well this monday i cant find them. there was like hundreds possibly thousands hanging together in the corner of the pond.

Now in the same corner but out of the water on this myrtle tree, black like flies, are in armys working their way up. what do i need to do, will they eventually fly away ? will they harm the tree?


thanks for a quick response!!


i told the bossman they looked like some sort of larvea (sp?)



We have largemouth bass and Koi

anyone???,,, im located in Hilton Head South Carolina. Temps are in mid 80's and the water temp is about 75

Can you describe the "tadpole-like things" and marching "things" more? I would think the tadpole-like things might have been tadpoles, either tree frogs or toads. But, they wouldn't look like flies climbing the tree. How big are they? Dragonfly larvae come out and climb up stuff but not in swarms but as individuals. Can you get a photo of them? Do they have wings? What are they doing? I doubt they would hurt the bush. I would have thought the bass and/or koi would have eaten the things when they were in the water.

OK, the tadpole like things were like miniscule tadpoles, i mean tiny. they were in the pond for a few days schooled up in the corner. they certainly were not tadpoles. almost like misquito larvae.



heres what they turned into :o
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b8db3...00AZuWLNi3ct2Mg
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b8db3...00AZuWLNi3ct2Mg
http://im1.shutterfly.com/procserv/47b8db3...00AZuWLNi3ct2Mg
some have wings and some dont, just think the are inbetween stages.

I have no idea what those are but they made me itchy just looking at those pics. Icky :)

Ok, you've stumped me. I feel bad that I don't know but I don't know everything. You're in South Carolina, right? There are so many insects in the photo, that I have trouble discerning an individual for identification purposes. Can you try to get a close up photo of just one bug?

One guess is stoneflies. I've not heard of them swarming but they're the only insect with an aquatic larvae that has adults that look like your bugs that I can think of right now. This site says they can swarm:
http://www.everythingabout.net/articles/bi...sects/stonefly/
A few others sites said they never swarm. I'm just guessing!

Other guesses are alderflies, fishflies, or dobsonflies. Now that I think of it, it's probably one of those three. Try using images.google.com to see some photos for comparison.

Did these tadpole like things have legs, antenna, with all the aquatic larvae robyn listed you would have noticed those features and none would swim in a tadpole like fashion or even would be seen swiming, they would stick to bottom under debri, also they need pretty fast running water, to get the highest amount of oxygen. They could never survive in a pond.

i found this, and pretty sure its them

http://ipm.ncsu.edu/AG369/notes/biting_midges.html

I don't know ..... those are pretty small!

PG

They can't be midges....too big. Midges are so small, they are known as "no-see-ums" because they are so tiny. They can even go through the spaces in window screens. Robyn's guess of stoneflies is a good guess, but I did't see any in the image with obvious furcal rami and the larvae don't look like tadpoles.

The picture is too crowded to see individuals. Are you sure they developed from the mass of larvae that you saw in the pond? The reason I ask is that you said what you saw in the pond were very tiny individuals and the adults in the tree are not what I would call tiny, assuming that it has not been a long period of time since you observed the larvae. I copied the picture and enlarged it to maximum and some of these look to be colored black and white and look like they could be insect order Hemiptera. Water boatmen and Backswimmers belong to that group and will leave the water to fly to other areas, but you say they "marched" out and up the tree. Also, some images look like coreid bugs (also Hemiptera), but I don't know if any of them have aquatic stages.

Don

I saw your bug photos, and those guys are way too big to be midges. I agree with Don that you can't assume the mass of tadpole-like creatures begat those things in the tree. You seemed so sure that they did but I also don't know of insect larvae that act or look like tadpoles. The adult insects could be "true bugs" (Hemiptera). Maybe shore bugs? Maybe not, they're small but do swarm. Just comparing photos of your bugs, they look most like alderflies to me.