White Worms?

[darkdep]

I noticed tonight while doing a thorough cleaning of my juvie tank that there was a little white worm swimming freely near the surface.  Maybe 1/2" long.  Having lost a blue dolphin juvie yesterday, I reacted and grabbed/squished the thing.  I looked further and found another one on the glass above the waterline.  Couldn't find more.

No idea where they could have come from...nothing new in this tank in a while.  Any ideas?  Could they be harmful?

[zapisto]

are you doing wter change with tap water ?
if yes when was your last water change ?
is this look like a hair ?

[darkdep]

I am using tap water, yes (conditioned of course).

Last waterchange was, well, tonight...I noticed them after a waterchange (tonight was about 50% due to a dead fish)...previous to that it may have been 10 days ago.

Probably around the thickness of a hair, yes.

[Julie]

Dark, it must be planaria.  Could it possibly be a tapeworm?  Does it look segmented?

Julie

[luvfishies]

I'm with Julie, planaria most likely. Harmless, but does indicate an excess of food in the tank.

When they move, do they move like an inchworm, or more like a creep-crawl movement?

[zapisto]

Planaria.
harmless
they come by million in the tap water
people who drink tap water , drink thousand of them

[darkdep]

They were not segmented, no.  The excess food thing is a possibility...this tank is one my wife feeds...and she tends to put in food behind my back because "they look hungry".

Ok, looks like I have nothing to worry about

[pegasus]

Planaria? Maybe but looks more like Roundworms (Nematodes) from your description

I noticed tonight while doing a thorough cleaning of my juvie tank that there was a little white worm swimming freely near the surface.

Planaria are more translucid than white and glides more than swims. They are flat not round.

Maybe 1/2" long.  Having lost a blue dolphin juvie yesterday, I reacted and grabbed/squished the thing.

Planaria are usualy around 1/4"  1/2" would be their max.

I looked further and found another one on the glass above the waterline.  Couldn't find more.

Planaria don't like to be above waterline. If you also can see one , you should also see many more. Nematodes are lfew a part and much more nocturnal.

No idea where they could have come from...nothing new in this tank in a while.  Any ideas?  Could they be harmful?

It took them a long time to reach 1/2"    They could have come with flakes, pellets, air, bottle water, you name  it. Harmful? If you find that you are infest, then it's time to ask yourself what's wrong with your system.

[darkdep]

Hmm...Interesting.  I'll have to look up both of these things and see what looks more like what I saw.

[gvv]

I started looking through goole for nematodes and found the following page:
http://www.ento.csiro.au/science/nematode.html
The pic on top looks like I saw in "Dune".
But I cannot understand how they can come through air or bottle water as pegasus mentioned?
Also I always thought that nematodes are small worms that nice to feed the fry, but acoording to the inet there are a lot of different types and some of them are yused as biological pest control (!).

From other side: after I got SW tank I understood what does it mean "live rock" -  you will see so many strange things you would never imagine!

[Julie]

When i purchased my fluval filter with cycled biomedia included, and my penguin - I filled my tank with ice cold tap water and started running the filters.  I had an abundance of these round looking worms that pegasus is referring too.  Some were a few inches long, swimming all over my empty tank with ice cold well water.  They had to be in the filter because the tank was empty until I filled it up with water.  It took a long time to get rid of them - they seemed to hide in the substrate.  I never found out exactly what they were but they are gone now.

Julie

[darkdep]

I just read that nematodes only grow to 0.1 inch...these were larger than that.  Also, apparantly nematodes are constantly thrashing in an S shape...which is definetly what the swimming one looked to be doing.  Also looked at several pics of Planaria, and none really looked like what I saw.

I had another good look tonight and couldn't see any more.  They might be nocturnal.

[Julie]

http://creatures.ifas.ufl.edu/misc/horsehair_worms.htm

[darkdep]

Definetly not those.  

[pegasus]

Over 20,000 species of nematodes, with sizes from 0.3mm to 8 meters, take your pick. All nematodes lay eggs. some will dry up and be carried by wind, birds or fly, etc. again .. take your pick.  

[mseguin]

From what I remember pegasus, that species estimate could actually be low, no one really knows how many speceis there are, since most of them look pretty much the same externally. :-)