Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Critters in water

When looking real carefully at the water off my dock I noticed a bunch of little red dots in the water. At first I thought they were just specks of some material floating around but soon noticed they were moving around. After catching one I put it on a white plastic board and you can see that it has legs moving around. What are these? They are only about the size of the tip of a ball-point pen and red in color. I will try taking a picture and posting it.

Good luck getting a close photograph of them. They are Hydrarcarina a term of convenience for water mites - microscopic spider-like mites adapted for life in the water. The different species are colors of green, blue, orange, brown and red. Most all the species are restricted to freshwater only a few species are found in brachish or salt waters and none are terrestrial. They are different from spiders in that water mites have the cephalothorax and abdomen fused into one round mass body segmentation is missing. Also they 6 legs and spiders have 8, thus water mites are NOT spiders. Water mites are most common where there is aquatic vegetation and water is shallower than 6 ft. Usually they are not a major diet of fish but small fish do eat them. There are probably at least 600 different species in North America and around 4000 species worldwide. Overall pretty neat little critters.