L'water louse: a filter, but much smarter?

How does a filter work?

"It works by sucking in water that it forces through a 'filter mass'. The water is thus freed from its main impurities, which will decompose in the filter mass with the help of bacteria, producing nitrates among other things at the end of the process."
The filter does not allow for the reduction of nitrates or dissolved pollutants.

The problem is therefore that the filters do not sort.

Whether the "impurities" are dead or alive, useful or not, everything is sucked in.

The little snails, the daphnia, the fry, the ostracods, and everything that can be swallowed is swallowed!

 

Introducing some water lice into your aquarium or pond is the opposite logic: it is the "filter" that moves towards the waste, and we let it choose only what is dead and spare everything else.

Indeed, the water lice are unable to eat anything alive: plants or otherwise, they consume dead tissues and never living tissues.

 

The aselle is a small aquatic crustacean. Quite similar to a woodlice with its 10 legs and gray shell, it rarely exceeds 1 cm in length (males are larger than females).

"Present in all wild aquatic ecosystems, it plays a detritivore role: it is the one that cleans ponds, lakes, and streams of all organic waste that, without it (and ostracods), would accumulate."

 

'Its presence lightens the work of bacteria. And thus limits their drawback: in too great a number, they consume far too much oxygen.'

When the pill bug eats a dead leaf, the bacteria only have to make its droppings disappear... and not the leaf anymore!

 

The aselle is so respectful of all living things that some aquarists (including killifish enthusiasts) use it to watch over their fish spawn. The water lice spend their time eating all the impurities that stick to the eggs, eating the dead eggs that rot, and thus help prevent healthy eggs from being contaminated. Real babysitters!

 

In the filters of the ponds, they eat all the dead leaves throughout the winter. But they also do so on the bottom of the pond itself, if the fish do not eat them.

The aselle is therefore a mini-filter that moves towards debris instead of blindly sucking everything in, and only consumes what is dead. The daphnia, the ostracods, shrimp, fry, and your fish have nothing to fear from it.

 

Ultimately, nature had the solution before us!

Even today, less than 1% of aquarists are aware of the existence of the water louse.

 

To be informed about the release of future articles, be sure to sign up for the free mailing list at the bottom of this page!