small yellowish worm seen in tank

b_evans06

AC Members
Jan 22, 2006
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Pocahontas, Ar
Was getting ready to turn off my lights and saw a smallish (around 1/4") long yellowish worm wiggling around in the water. Never have seen anything like that before. tank is 20 gallon with gold barbs, black ruby tiger barbs, cory cats, an otto, and a snail. Nothing new has been added within the last 6 months or so. Just normal water changes. I assume this is a bad parasite or something along the lines. What do I need to do to rid it out of my tank. I have only seen one so far.
 
Well parasites need a host so if it was not attached to your fish, watch and see if it does. Did you remove it? Can you get a picture of it? 1/4" seems a little large to be planara but its possible. Was it swimming or was it attached to the glass. Also, was it long or was it more flat and oval? It could be a leech. A picture would be really helpful.
 
I wasn't able to take a pic or catch it. Upon stirring it up it just sank down the the bottom and went into the rocks. It was wiggling the whole time. I don't know what it was doing before I stirred it up. I moved my mag-float and drug the gravel and it came floating up into the water. It looked round but like I said it was there and gone within about 5 seconds so I couldn't get a good view, it caught me offgaurd.
 
I have been looking at the tank very closely and just found where there are tiny little white worm looking creatures. Maybe a 1/16" very tiny. I will try to get a pic of at all possible. They are below the gravel next to the edge of the tank and I can see them barely moving around. There are a lot of them.
 
Detritus worms

Annelids “Segmented Worms” - Including:
DETRITUS WORMS

The annelids are the phylum of segmented worms which includes earthworms. Most annelids are NOT purely aquatic in fresh water; the annelids found in freshwater are all oligochaetes (which means "few-bristled") and are not very important in the freshwater ecology as are their marine cousins, the polychaetes (which means "multi-bristled"), are in marine environments.
All the oligochaete worms are hermaphrodites (an organism that posses both male and female genitalia). Many are nearly microscopic too

Detritus Worms (from the group of worms called Oligochaetes, sub group naidid worms) are often misidentified in the aquarium hobby as Planaria without close inspection by many internet articles such as about.com.
Many of these worms are accidentally introduced by live plants, gravel (especially in the case of common Detritus Worms) live fish foods, and even brought in with fish transfers.
(Click picture to enlarge)
Many not familiar with Detritus worms will label these as everything form midge larvae, Planaria to baby earthworms, of which none is true. They are very common and most often seen during vacuuming and other cleaning procedures.
These worms generally are not a problem, however high numbers of particular species can indicate low oxygen levels and low filter productivity, which very often suggests some degree of pollution caused by poor cleaning procedures, over crowding, over feeding and poor filtration
Please reference these sources for even more identification (and further information so as to dispel the internet aquarium myth that these are Planaria):
Planaria
Aquatic Life: Worms ,
Oligochaeta Worms
Aquatic Worms
 
AquariaCentral.com