Little brown worms??

**chronic** · 10-26-2008, 01:45 AM

Tonight I was putting another piece of wood into my tank. After doing so, I noticed this little brown worm on my oscar.

Its about 5mm long, I saw some more on the same side of the tank, they're all brown. Very skinny, maybe a couple times the thickness of a hair. Kind of squirm when they swim..

What are they???

Water parameters are decent. Nitrite went up a bit today after I got the sump going.

ph 7.6
nitrite .25
nitrate 10
ammonia 0

I feed them a couple times a day. I have a bunch of plants, the sand was from a salt water aquarium. I rinsed it very well in hot water before using it, a couple sea shells in there that I keep picking out.

Should I be worried? Will salt kill them or should I get something with a little more kick.

**cocoa_pleco** · 10-26-2008, 02:08 AM

probably planaria or some other worm, they will hitchhike on plants and thrive when there is excess food in the tank. feed a bit less and keep up with water changes and they will go away. they are no harm to your fish

**Northernguy** · 10-26-2008, 02:09 AM

Stop feeding for a few days and a water change and vacuum wouldn't hurt either.
Are the worms swimming in the tank or on the wall of the tank.
Can you possibly get a pic of them?

**chronic** · 10-26-2008, 02:43 AM

I could try, but I garauntee my camera wont pick them up.

I think I unearthed them when I stirred the gravel up moving pots. They dont swim freely... they must just be in the gravel. Now that I've starred at the gravel for a bit...yeah, there are tons of them crawling around in the sand.

But yeah, I'll do that. Kind of got into the habit of listening to my oscars when they begged for food lol

**Northernguy** · 10-26-2008, 02:55 AM

Os beg for food as soon as you get near the tank!

stop feeding and do a few water changes and they will be gone.

**chronic** · 10-26-2008, 02:58 AM

Excellent...harmless or not, I want them DEAD!! Gross little bastards...

**korith** · 10-26-2008, 03:25 AM

I had them a week or so ago in my red cherry shrimp tank. I made the classic mistake of overfeeding and before I knew it there were a ton of those ugly little worms flying in the tank. Gravel vac up the ones I could see, cleaned the substrate rather well to get rid of any large remains of food, and did a water changes every other day. The planaria or whatever those worms were, disappeared in a few days. Water changes helped big time.