Anchor Worms??

[FireZeus]

I've noticed these tiny white things that appear to be worms. They move like worms and are about 1cm long. They are floating all over the tank, but don't appear to be on the fish. My question is this...
Only 2 small oscars are in this 55gl...
Can I take them and put them into the 125 community or leave them in the tank to be treated? Or should they be removed during the treatment? I'm going to be using PARAGON for the treatment. Thanks folks.

[thom336]

55G is on the small side for oscars of any size, as they do produce alot of waste. you would have to get a larger tank when they grow, so i would start out big with oscars in the first place. but, back to the question in hand...

moving the socars to a community tank is out of the question. i would beliveve they would be ok in the tank while the treatment is being carried out, and it is possible that there are womrs on the fish which have gone unnoticed, and so it would be adviable to treat them as a precaution anyway. but these dont sound like ancor worms to me, since they have not attached themselves to the fish - which is where the ancor worms get their name...

[wetmanNY]

If you can see it in the water, and it's not attached to the fish, it's not a parasite.

Your worms sound like nematodes. Thread-thin, white or whitish, constantly thrashing. If you had smaller fish, they'd eat em all up. Your Oscar is too big to bother.

I wouldn't nuke the system!

[FireZeus]

Wetman, you nailed the description, but whats the remedy? I added the smaller fish to the tank, but being oscars, he won't last much longer than it takes to read this post. What are the consequences of leaveing the nematodes alone?

[pinballqueen]

There are nematodes in almost every established tank. There's no point in getting rid of them other than aesthetics, and you'll never be completely rid of them.

That being said, don't feed your fish for a few days and many of the little worms will die off. I have found that overfeeding is what will cause them to come out in the open, and the reverse is also true: no food in the water means no nematodes in the water. They'll stay in your filter or substrate, where the nutritious stuff is plentiful.

[wetmanNY]

Right!

...plus, get a folding 10x loupe and run your eye down the top of the gravel at the front glass. It's alive! with mites and copepods and flatworms and...