Unknown life-form on the glass of my 65G goldfish tank

GoldLenny

Senior Member? Do I get a 5% disc.?
These "lines" are some kind of worm or life-form on the glass of my 65G goldfish tank. They are not planaria as I know what planaria are and what they look like. These "lines" are motionless except that every once in a while, on the bigger "lines", a string will come out as if to look around and then go back into the "line". The "lines" are 1mm - 2mm long and most of them are perfectly straight but some do curve a little.

I never had these before when I had my pleco in the tank but since I moved, I rehomed the pleco at the same time so the two goldfish would have the tank to themselves. The room the tank is in gets some morning sunlight blocked by vinyl mini-blinds (and I'm planning on replacing them with light-blocker blinds since my 65G is getting a little more algae growth than it had when the pleco was in it. I've Googled for worms, lines, etc. on glass of aquarium and can't find any other images that look like these.

The tank is healthy with ammonia/nitrites at 0.0ppm and nitrates at less than 20ppm before my weekly 25% PWC. I don't feel like I'm over-feeding but it's possible since the pleco isn't in there any longer. Actually, when the pleco was in the tank, the goldfish would steal some of his algae thins as they softened up if he didn't eat them fast enough... so I really think the tank and goldfish are getting less food than before. The greenish color to the water is because I took these pics with the macro-underwater setting on my digi-cam since that was the only way I could get these things to show up. The water is clear and the "lines" are actually darker color like a greenish color.

I thought it was a weird algae at first until I saw one of the hair things come out. There has been a slight buildup of a biofilm (possibly a very thin coat of algae) on the glass since I moved and rehomed the pleco and you will see the area surrounding these "lines" is cleaner than the rest of the glass... almost like these things are eating the biofilm/algae. I also noticed these lines in my canister filter when I did maintenance on it today but did not realize they were "alive". I actually thought they were needles from my hornwort although I never noticed one of the plants in bad shape where it did a needle drop. I did have to use the sprayer of my faucet to get these lines off the inside of the canister housing which struck me as odd but I still never thought about them being some kind of life form.

Any suggestions as to what they are?

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Nematodes, they are a sign of over feeding and poor water quality. I had some from a snail I got. Did you get any thing new for the tank?
 
Actually, after I got rid of Mr. Pleco, I did move four 1/2" long MTS from my cherry shrimp tank to my goldfish tank in hopes that they would help with the cleaning since I didn't want to go get a some Apple/Mystery snails. There is no evidence of these "nematodes" in my Cherry Shrimp tank but maybe the shrimp or other snails eat them.

It's not a water quality issue in my goldfish tank as far as everything I can test for. I only have around 1/2" of gravel in the bottom and vacuum the entire bottom weekly when I do my 25% PWC's. I just used my sponge on a stick to clean the inside glass and these little lines came off easy and kind of turned into dust in the water when they broke up.

Are they some kind of tube built out of the algea or biofilm on the glass? Is this why the areas around the "lines" were clean? I'll do some Googling but I know there are a lot of species of nematodes so if you can give me more info as to what type they are, I'd appreciate it.

I know various nematodes and other microscopic and miniature critters live in our tanks on a regular basis without harming our fish pets. I'm presuming these are the same since nothing is wrong with my fish but let me know.
 
how do you know they came from a snail? i'm curious.

They appeared a few hours after I put the snail in. I never had them before the snail. After my Betta and or snail ate them they never came back.

The nematodes where white though. They looked like the things in the pic.
 
Yes I have real plants but the plants have been in the tank for quite a while and I never had these before. The only changes were removal of Mr. Pleco about a month ago and then the addition of the four MTS a couple of weeks ago. The theory of the snails as the carrier is a good one so far except I did not see these proposed nematodes in my Cherry Shrimp tank but I like I said earlier, I know there are lots of things growing in our tanks that we never see under normal conditions. I never thought about how removal of Mr. Pleco would change the dynamics fo the tank except for the possibility of algae growth. I did not realize he was eating other critters too but since pleco's are omnivores (for the most part), it's obvious he was cleaning the glass of anything that tried to grow on it.
 
I may be way off on this, but to me it looks like the lines that form from brown slime (diatom) algae. Do you have brown slime on your glass?
 
If there is a tube with something coming out of it, I wouldn't think they are nematodes at all, I would think more along the lines of hydra. If I am not mistaken, Nematodes move frequently and can be free-floating in the water column as well as on the glass.
 
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