# White Worms



## hcubed (Sep 3, 2010)

Has anyone experience with these worms?

[background]
I have a spare 10 gallon tank that I have cycled (fishless) and don't have any fish in it at the moment. I only have spare java fern in it taking up about 2/3 of the tank. I use a cheap wal-mart HOB filter on it, no substrate. At the end of the cycle, when ammonia and nitrites where being neutralized, I didn't do a massive water change right away because I didn't have any fish that needed to go in there soon (laziness). The nitrates, therefore, have been allowed to remain very high until I did a 90% water change a few days go.

Today I noticed tiny white worms mostly on the glass. They are about 1/4" long. They are not flat and short, and do not have triangular heads like planaria. They do not have a skinny proboscus like stylaria. They are tubular and appear to have a thicker band in one area much like an earthworm does. Little hairs can also been seen. The closest thing I can find on the web after much searching is this Naididae. photo:

http://www.biopix.com/photo.asp?photoid=51442&photo=naididae-indet.

The best photo I could get of mine, even with my Nikon with macro lens on a tripod, is not very good, but can be seen at:










Has anyone experience with this kind of worm? I obviously don't put food in this tank, but it has been LOADED with nitrates and has naturally decaying plant material as new java fern replaces old java fern.

HCubed


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## triscuit (May 6, 2005)

Wow- I have no idea. It looks like you've got a pretty good match with the photo and the link.

How long ago did you have fish in that tank? Where did your plant come from? I don't suppose you've ever fed tubifex worms?


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## hcubed (Sep 3, 2010)

It completed a cycle about a month ago. I got some pre-owned plants which I put through a bleach plant dip to get rid of snails and the like. All the plants from that batch that end up in my 55 gallon have been fine. No worms in my 55 gallon that I see. Never fish except 3 days when I housed a bristlenose a month agi when treating the 55 gallon with copper for snails. Never fed tubifex worms to anything anywhere in my life.

It does seem like a good match from the photo. Weird thing is I can't find any info pertaining to it in aquariums. I guess I can assume it'll go away if I do big water changes frequently for the next week or so. I just figured having plants only in tank meant it would never get anything like this in it.

Strange.

HCubed


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## triscuit (May 6, 2005)

I don't think I've looked at the different nematodes present in aquaria all that closely. But, check out this link: http://forum.punkyfish.nl/board/www/for ... age/842250

It kinda makes sense that they were in the substrate of the tank, and now that the food is gone, they are out and about looking for some. Water changes usually does the trick for nematodes and planaria and the like. They typically are not harmful to fish, if kept in check.


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## hcubed (Sep 3, 2010)

Thanks for the continued feedback Time will tell.


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## PfunMo (Jul 30, 2009)

Hummm! May not mean much but I did have something that might have been the same. I had a twenty that I was working with getting plants started. I had a bunch of free hydrilla but was using used flourite and gravel mix that had been sitting in a guys garage for six months. I found it still was somewhat damp but as I was only working on growing some plants before adding fish I did nothing to sterilize the mix. After several weeks of plants only I did find some really thin short worms that seemed to float in the water. They were almost transparent and had I not been looking really close at the plants, I would not have seen them. Too thin to guess thickness but they were somewhere around a 1/4 inch long. At that time I had a stock of unwanted livebearers, so I added some and the worms disappeared. I assume the fish ate them??? Never seen any again.


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