On 27 May 2004 14:44:11 GMT, Ka30P wrote:

Rodney wrote
During last summer they started to get
semicircular wounds on their bodies and one had it's face eaten away.

This is not the kind of damage a dragonfly nymph would do. And it would not
attack large fish.
Dragonfly nymphs prey on fish fry and very small fish. They grab them with
their jaw parts (think the second set of teeth in Alien) and then they tear
their prey apart and eat it. There would never be a circular wound.

I thought it was only the lower jaw of the nymph that extended so I
assumed it grabbed the fish and ate as much as it could reach while it
hung on. When we emptied the pond there was no waterlife and usually it
teems with things so I assumed it was starving and tried for a fish. We
do have Emperor dragonflies and I assume that a nymph of one of those
is quite big. The fish that had it's face eaten away was the smallest
one we had at the time, about 5 inches long. We haven't had anything
attacked since we cleaned the pond out last year but just couldn't
clear the bacterial infection. We'll have a word with the vet about
antibiotics.

--
Regards - Rodney Pont
The from address exists but is mostly dumped,
please send any emails to the address below
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