white thread worms

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nickie_nicole_ws6

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Jun 30, 2008
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I went away for a week just came home and thee are a ton of these white thread worms basking on the side of my tank, I am doing a water change now my pike are iching, looks like they were way over fed while i was out of town, what should I do ?

I have never had this problem before how do I get rid of them?
 
I found a bunch of informational threads in here, basically water changes to the tank I can not believe hopw many of these there are while I am emptying the water in my tank :0
 
Do a search on the internet for these, planaria (sp?). As long as they are only a couple mm long, mostly on the sides of the tank, although some will be free floating, they are harmless to your fish. They can be introduced by live plants or overfeeding. Just do water changes every day or every other day and cut back on feeding for a couple days if possible.

I just noticed last night I have them in my 125g and 54g. I was hoping my UV sterilizer would clear them up, but I doubt it so I'll be doing the water changes as well.

As a side note, I had them probably 10 years ago in a 55g. I bought a microscope just to see what they were. I remember I had one on a slide. I observed that if I put a drop of unconcentrated medicine (very potent parasitic med that was blue) the worm absorbed the medicine, turned blue, and lived!! I would then cut another one in half. It just turning into 2 worms. I did EVERYTHING possible to rid them. Instead, in the process I just ended up hurting my fish. I did salt dips, disinfected the tank, ornaments, and filters. Tried various medicines for parasites. This went on for months and ended up losing some fish from the meds. At the time I never heard of these things. Finally, almost giving up as a last resort I just kept doing 25-50% water changes every other day, cut way back on feeding and got rid of the live plants. I haven't seen them since recently, 10 years later....

Hope this helps
 
I also wanted to add that the way I noticed last night that I had these was because I saw the white patches left by them on the sides of the tank. The glass looks cloudy/dirty from the inside. That's what left over from their cocoon crap
 
If these worms are long, they are detritus worms or annelids, not planaria. Both the planaria and annelids are harmless and indicate poor water conditions, inadequate tank maintenance and/or overfeeding.
 
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