Worms in my tank??

[silk]

These little worms popped up in my 29gal and they're making my skin crawl. My two axolotls are acting fine, and the worms don't seem interested in the lotls - they just flick through the water.

What are they, are they harmless, can I get rid of them?

 

[ClockworkParrot]

From what I can tell they look like bloodworms.

I had a terrible problem with them in my 40 gallon tank. It got so bad that would I spend about 2 hours a day trying to siphon out as many as I could with a turkey baster and kept having to change out like 3 gallons of water a day just to keep them under control. Even with my efforts to hand remove them I would still have a bunch swimming around. They would even bother my lotls since they would get behind their gills which would make them thrash around and try to scratch them off. I live in Florida where their adult gnat looking form are everywhere and it would take just 2-4 of them to start the whole process over.

My solution though it may not be the popular one is I keep anywhere from 4-6 rosey minnows in my tank that I had first quarantined. They keep away from the lotls pretty well and they completely cleaned up my problem. I do end up losing a minnow like once every two months but overall my lotls are well fed so they mostly leave them be.

 

[silk]

But I don't feed my lotls bloodworms, dead or alive. My fancy goldfish get them but they're obviously in different tanks. And these are very small, I'd say just under a centimeter. Nowhere as dark as bloodworms, and they wiggle around in spasmic circles.

 

[ClockworkParrot]

My axolotls were well past eating frozen bloodworms at the time as well. The problem is some adults flew into your tank and laid eggs. The adult forms look a lot like gnats. If the problem gets worse you'll probably start seeing the adults settling on top of the water in your tank or flying around the room.

 

[fafler]

Are they crawling on the glass? In that case, it's flatworms. They are harmless, but a sign of overfeeding and/or not enough cleaning. They live everywhere in nature, and always get into aquariums at some point. I suspect them of actually being able to be frozen and sold together with bloodworms, and revive in the aquarium. Fish usually eat them, which is why you rarely see them in those aquariums.

Clean the substrate, change a lot of water and make sure everything you feed them gets eaten.

 

[tammyaxie]

They sound like gnat larva. They breed in still water and may even do well in low flow filtered water. They may not seem problematic now but can deteriorate the quality of the water. They used to form in my birds water when I was a kid.