Help: i have a worm invasion!!!

[aurora1981]

i have just noticed there is a lot of thin white woms upto 5mm long floating around in my axies tank, they also appear to like to hang off him for a while too. im not sure if they are planaria....im thinking they night be something else as they dont seem to be sticking to the glass. Does anyone know how to get rid of these???????

 

[Abrahm]

There are tons of free living aquatic worms that can take up residence in your aquarium. You can read about various tank critters here. I wouldn't worry about the worms themselves, but the presence of so many worms tells me that you may have other problems with your tank.

How often are you siphoning out the bottom of the tank? Are there any objects (PVC pipes, rocks, etc) that detritus can become stuck on, under or in?

Basically what I'm looking at here is that those worms need a food source and since there are so many worms that probably means there is a lot of food. The best thing you can do is to make sure you siphon out the sand/gravel/bottom and check on and under decorations and try to remove anything that the worms could be eating. You should try to make sure that the axies are eating all their food when it is offered to them.

Trying to remove the worms themselves or just killing the worms won't solve your problem and will likely make things worse. Just remove the worms food source and they will disappear.

 

[peterj]

If you have back-up accomodation for your Axie you could put some fish in the tank to clean them up while you sort out the organic load.

 

[Bellabelloo]

If its any help I had a similar invasion of these little beasties, which timed beautifully with the larvae hatching, so I set up the brine shrimp net in the water current and managed to catch a few batches to feed the littles. They seemed to increase and then more or less disappeared..just left now with the barnicle like ones and the mysterious red pin head sized dot that toodles around the tank.

 

[aurora1981]

thanks for your advice, ive taken out the pipes and given them a good clean and have syphoned my sand to remove some of them. its looking a bit clearer now so hopefully they will stay away!!

 

[stephen]

when i clean my tank i also find these little white worms. When i move around the rocks on the bottom all these worms come out. I have only ever seen one floating around the tank.

 

[niajetze]

I used to have loads of these guys got rid of most my sand (left just enought to cover the ground of the tank) and they soon died down --still have one or two though. At least if these guys are thriving you know the water quality is ok you just need keep it a bit tidier (hand feeding and syphoning are best)