White hairlike worms swimming in the water?

[sgtmyers88]

Hey guys has anyone ever seen white hairlike worms swimming freely in your aquariums? I was doing a water change on one of my FW tanks when I seen a few of these. I have seen them in the past but never bothered to investigate it.

Thanks.

[Squaffy]

Horsehair worms maybe? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nematomorpha

Just put me off the tin of rice pudding I was eating

[RTR]

Or just plain nematodes. They are common and normal tank inhabitants but are rarely seen in well-maintained tanks. If you see them free-swimming in the tank water, it is a heavy hint that The DOCs (dissolved organic compounds) in the water col;umn and in the substrate are excessive, Increase the substrate vacuuming and water changes. They look like a slender sine wave.

Well-maintained tanks generally get 50% water changes weekly. They don't show free-swimming nematodes.

[sw10mm]

Sounds like your feeding too much I had these too forget the name but harmless

[sgtmyers88]

Yeah I did stir up the substrate quite a bit so that may explain it.

[purplecandle]

Just throwing this possibility out there..

It's spring here and I have Windows open. Unfortunately that led to me finding gnats around my trash can.

Right before I started seeing gnats, I made the mistake of slowing down the flow on the filter of my snail tank and I forgot to turn it back up. This made the water current a little slower than normal. The tank also does not have a proper lid because it has a rim that won't allow that.

So, I go to do a water change...everything is fine. Then I look in the bucket for stray snails and see worms..not planaria, very wiggly. So I go to Google and eventually figure out that the worms are midge larvae.

So those gnat like to lay the eggs (or whatever they lay) in slow moving water with lots of decaying plant matter. My snail tank was HEAVEN for them! My snails also enjoy decaying plant material

I have now remedied the lid!