Red1313

... with Ladybugs
They don't bother me that much but one concern since I now see one crawling across Coolie's tank. Would they be a poisonous/toxic to a fish if the happened to fall in and become lunch?

Lucy

They're kind of cute when you see one or two, but I've been infested with them before and they cease to be cute. lol

I don't know if they'd be ok with your fish, but you can suck 'em up with your vacuum cleaner to help get the numbers down.
If you have a garden release them there, they'll eat the aphids that eat plants.

sirdarksol

Potentially. They do exude/spray an alkali toxin when attacked (or some of them do). The fish may learn to avoid the ladybug coloring, though. That's the reason for the coloring. It wards attackers away. Your fish may even have an ingrained fear of eating such insects.

Red1313

I only see them one at a time but I'm still trying to figure-out where they're coming from b/c I've... dealt with a few.

Red1313

I wouldn't say Coolie's scared of them... He's flaring at the one on his tank trying to scare it way
I'm asking b/c a fly/spider or something fell in Coolie's tank and he grabbed it and then proceeded to freeze and start to sink and look really sick... I was freaking out! Luckily he recovered though...

sirdarksol

That he's not trying to eat it suggests that he may have a fear of eating it. (It's really cute to think of a fish flaring at a ladybug to try to scare it away).
It sounds like most ladybugs' poison is only strong enough to make them taste bad, but some are actually poisonous.
Fishes' bodies may be better or worse equipped to handle this kind of thing. I just don't know.
If you're really concerned, you can use nylon to try to seal up any gaps in the lid.

prairielilly

If an apartment must have a bug population, I would say ladybugs would be the least unpleasant one that I can think of. Sounds like they're not poisonous if they end up as fish food, so all good (they're not poisonous to cats apparently, as all of mine have tried them). I don't know enough about ladybugs to speculate on why they're there, but I've lived in rented places where I've inherited populations of many different undesirables left behind by former tenants, bad housekeeping, poor maintenance and the like, and from my experience if you 'deal with' enough of them, and for enough time, eventually they WILL go away...mostly Such is the fun of tenancy.