Water beetle

Post Reply New Topic

Anyone here have experience keeping dytiscidae (predaceous water beetles) as pets? I fished one out of the pool and now I want to keep him. I'm going to name him Puppy.

Never tried to keep one as a pet. I always just let it go afterwards.

how big are those?

About the size of a small goldfish.

cool, i want one

can you feed them goldfish ?....

I can't remember what they eat, but I doubt it's fish. lol

Here's the Wiki for them...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dytiscidae

according to wikipedia they're edible

apparently they eat them in Mexico and parts of Asia

Doesn't phase me one bit. Most red candies are made from beetles. (red dyes) and Jello has bones and other stuff in it.

i thought the gelatin in jello was derived from some kind of pig part.

I'm far too drunk to google for the information.

What a cooincidence, I just caught one yesterday.

I'm not exactly sure what they eat, but I know they love algae and seaweed. Put something floaty in there for it to rest on. I've got some little bits of driftwood for mine.

I put some fish food and an algae wafer in there, but he doesn't seem too interested...he'd rather just gobble up the live algae from the lake...which I hope can hold out.

Nope, they eat fish =) When I was little, I'd always catch waterbugs and minnows...and you can probably guess who survived the ordeal...

Apparently they eat snails, too.

Ah, cool. I never studied water beetles. I was always more interested in arachnids and other types if insects. Beetles just didn't interest me.

I used to have a pond which boasted an impressive array of water beetles. I never thought of keeping one in my house as they seemed to be more than happy in the pond. Then the pond got invaded by algae and all the beetles flew away

I had a couple of Dragon fly nymph hitch-hike with the last batch of Tadpoles I raised.

I was worried they'd eat the Tadpoles, but I never saw them hassling them.
I don't know what they ate, but twice I found newly pupated Dragonflies on the surface of the tank!

I love dragonflies!