White insect in pond

welcome to GoY.
Were they like empty skins? if so they could be the cast skins of mosquito larva after they have hatched. Any chance of a photo? Are you brave enough to lift one out and feel it. if it has 'meat' it may well be a form of mosquito larva. did they hang by their tails from the surface?
sorry about all the questions but its the best way of helping to identify them.

they are mosquito lava .if you make running water in your pond you wont get them so much.you are4 only bitter bye the females as the males have no mouth lol .ow and they breath through there bum people are better i know some that can talk through them lol

We get well educated every day on Goy!

and free to lol

thats disgusting... typical male heheh

sorry before everyone starts pm me with eveil messages I am just kidding

x x x

if ya not ill send the boys round lol

noooooooooooooooooooo

x x x

Our fish have been up to 'naughties' over the weekend, we now have loads of little eggs suspended along the edge of the pond amongst some blanket weed - been told by hubby not to de-blanket the pond for a while until the babies 'hatch'. Upon closer inspection, there are also some little insect type things floating on the surface, they look almost transparent and like a sort of see through tadpole but only about 2-3mm long. I think they are the 'cases' of the mozzies flying around in the evenings. Hopefully the mozzies are giving up their own lives for the tummies of the fish....yummy, mozzies for tea, tasty!

One larvae which matches the shape you descibe is the rat tailed maggot which will eventually hatch into a hoverfly. The ones I have seen have normally been bigger than 5mm but thye might start off smaller.

If you copy and paste the link into your browser it will hopefully come up with a picture

http://images.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/LyraEDISServlet%3Fcommand%3DgetThumbnailImage%26oid%3D10109506&imgrefurl=http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/IN809&usg=__xzsfxaBrfPGfBe0Xhf8FPb86nwE=&h=150&w=226&sz=10&hl=en&start=31&tbnid=aLzDToKwS79j_M:&tbnh=72&tbnw=108&prev=/images%3Fq%3Drat%2Btail%2Bmaggots%2B%2B-%2Bhoverfly%2Blarvae%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26start%3D20.

Was just going to add that the ones I have seen look like the ones in picture figure 14 if you scroll down the page. I have tried out the link above and it does work on my browser, so hopefully it will for you also.

thanks very much Weedfingers, they are exactly the ones in the pictures!
Now the question is are they worth worrying about? They are very close to my veg patch (the idea with the pond was to attract frogs that will eat slugs!) will they damage the crops? From reading the paper it doesn't seem likely but I have to say my girlfriend is worried about the last paragraph "if they are accidentally ingested..." Just what I need to encourage her to eat my new food!!!!
thanks again

I'm afraid I'm not very knowledgeable about insects although I find them fascinating. I have had these larvae in ponds where I grew up and recognised your description of them.

Before this article I have never heard of them being ingested and surviving inside a human before. It seems they can be eliminated quite easily in the very unlikely event it does happen with medication.

The site is from the US and they are talking about over 5000 species of hoverfly- it may be that only some of these can survive inside a person, and I'm in the UK and have never heard it of it happening.

I would be very surprised if this would be a problem, but you could always ask your GP if you are at all concerned. I have always heard good things about hoverflies and that they are normally great for vegetable gardens by killing pests. I have a pond of my own now too and see quite a lot of the hoverflies around although have not seen any larvae. It doesn't mean they are not there though.

I think you should be safe enough if you wash your veggies before eating them.

they wont do any harm to you in britain. the ingested bit is more to do with the 'dirty' water they hatch from.