Hello folks,

I have a 55g tank with 4 3 inch fantails and today while using one of those lil magetic scrubbers I noticed that I have a lot of very thin 'whip-like' things that swim around the tank on their own. Thinner than a human hair and range in size from 1/4 inch long to a full inch. Today I actually saw a fantail eat one.

My first thought was that I must have done a poor job of cleaning the tank after loosing a previous group of goldfish. These only lasted a week before going down - the fish store told me they thought I was actually feeding these to other fish (they called them feeders) and are not meant for long-term.


Has anyone ever heard of or seen anything like this?
Can they hurt my fantails?
Is there a treatment for this kind of thing?

Any advice would be appreciated.

tee1up

Do you have any snails that you got recently, I read somewhere on this site about snails carrying worms like you described. I'm sure exactly what I read about them, I just remember seeing them...time to do what I do best...RESEARCH!Yay!

I know I'm weird, I like research.

Hello Snap,

Ive done a bit of homework but am having trouble narrowing it down.
Planaria? Anchor Worm? Flatwork?

Having already lost a previous batch of fish - I'm convinced that these little white, very squiggly, very active things are from Mars and until some natural bacteria takes over ....we are doomed.

Im a bit of a wus...these things make my skin crawl but so far my fish seem oblivious other than snacking on the odd one.

Tee

My guess are they are planarias.Do you have gravel in your tank?If so,a good gravel vac is appropriate to get rid of them.They are actually harmless and good snackfood for your fish but a large number can make your water go bad I'm sure someone else will be able to help!

Hi,Have you ever saw them on an actual fish? My first thoughts on it were Planeria-they sometimes show up when you're not gravel vaccing often enough.Sometimes a few water changes and a couple good gravel vacs will get rid of those. Do these things look totally flat like? Do they have any skinny like attachement hanging off the end of them? What did you lose yuor previous fish to? As to the fish stores comments,I shake my head....There are alot of people who own healthy "Feeder fish" ,these guys can get pretty big,and live pretty many years. As for these Parasites,are they free swimming through out the whole tank,or mostly hanging out on the glass,and what color do they look?

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Thanks for all the feedback.

I've never actually seen one attached to my fish.

I looked up planaria and mine do not seem flat like the pictures rather, they are extremely thin, hairlike and white. Some are very short quarter inch or less...others are close to an inch in length, and all are super thin. They swim with a kind of s-shaped whipping motion (think flagella here).

I do indeed have about a half inch of gravel. And you tend to see them throughout the tank - usually 5-6 at a time...more if the tank is being stirred up.

I have not seen any clinging to the glass but they are tough to see until you catch them in the aquarium light. I wish I really knew what happened to the feeders. They seemed to be doing well for about 4 days and then within 24 hours they were all floating on the bottom or stuck to my intake pipe. The aquarium shop thought I had a temperature problem (I'm not using a heater) or possibly a water quality issue (I ran ph/amonia/nitrite/nitrate - all good).

Working with a limited budget here and would really hate to loose these four - other than the few worms things floating around - they are quite stunning (IMHO).

Thanks for taking the time (everyone) to read and respond to my post thus far.

They are probably saprophytic nematodes. Mostly harmless and they swim in a figure 8 like motion. They feed on organic waste trapped in the gravel. You need to clean the gravel more. Fish will eat them too.

Thanks for the update - I googled saprophytic nematodes and found a bunch of other folks with the same descriptions.

As the tank is pretty new and the gravel being pretty clean , I must have picked these up with my last batch of fish. I will redouble the gravel cleaning and maybe ease off on the food portions.

Thanks all.

Tee