Squiggly worms in my tank! Eeek!

loaches r cool

loaches r cool

Snail Terminator
Feb 15, 2006
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Gahanna, Ohio
tristan.homelinux.net
While doing a water change in my puffer tank (filter turned off / water calm) I noticed some wormy looking critters squiggling around my tank! They look nasty and are freaking me out lol! For ID purposes I recorded a short clip for any who want to see (1.8MB WMV) at http://tristan.homelinux.net/fish/forum/wormy.wmv
Please someone tell me if these are harmfull and if so what is the best course of treatment. BTW, because of the focus being slightly off they look thicker in the clip than they really are - they are like hair sized. I saw several of them, most about 1/4-1/2 inch long but the main one in the clip was the largest at nearly 1". :eek:
 
I recently had this in one of my tanks and posted a similar thread to this one. Someone told me that it sounded like planaria and what you have matches the squiggly little buggers that I had, also. I was told that they are not harmful and my fish made a snack out of them.
 
Great movie!!! Honestly, I love stuff like that.
Planaria crawl on objects, nematodes swim frantically in an 'S' shape. Neither are harmful but an over-abundance means you might need to feed less and gravel vacuum a bit more.
 
Ok, sounds like nematodes then. I am familiar with planaria and yeah, they are a bit different lookin. Funny thing is, I have just come back after being gone 7 days for the holidays. They hadnt been fed only yesterday (when I got back). I dont gravel vac very much though, since the tank is a sandy like substrate. The puffers dont even act like they can see them, remember most of them are only 1/4" long and the size of a hair. I saw a bumblee come across one and the bee darted the other way! I wonder maybe if the bb gobies might eventually eat them? Gobies mostly eat live things like worms anyhow. I'll feed em lightly and skip a few days and maybe they will get hungry enough to eat em.
 
I've seen the occasional nematode swimming through my tank as well. They tend to show up when I'm away for a few days or have neglected to vacuum my gravel in a while. My pencil fish snatch them up like spaghetti, but if I try and chase them down with the vacuum, they retreat into the substrate. They really creeped me out the first time I saw them though.
 
Eeek. I would check out the site in my sig it has a page that is YOUR NEW FISH HAVE DIED and it says something about worms somewhere on that page..
 
****, I'd pay to have somethign like that in my aquarium. I wish there was the equivilent of 'live sand' they have for reefs for FW aquariums.. I also got a kick out of watching the little living things in my livesand in my reef under a redlight in the middle of the night.
 
5Bettamom said:
Eeek. I would check out the site in my sig it has a page that is YOUR NEW FISH HAVE DIED and it says something about worms somewhere on that page..
Click to expand...

In the instances on that site, the worms were attached to the fish. Yes, there are parasitic worms and nematodes - But these free-swimming nematodes (and crawling planaria) are not harmful to fish.
 
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