Fishless Cycle - Hundreds Of White Worms?

[Lazerus]

In the middle of my fishless cycle….started into it 3 weeks ago on 4th Feb.

Its an 22gal tank with organic substrate, black quartz gravel, pre-soaked bogwood, live plants and some mature filter media from my other tank.

My water stats this morning were:
Ammonia: 1ppm
Nitrite: Sky high
Nitrate:40ppm
pH:7.2

I was studying the tank there, just before doing a water change (I wanted to just clean up the tank a bit and dilute some of my nitrates) and I was wondering what I was going to do with all the long haired algae that are growing and to my surprise I noticed some odd movement on my bogwood.

On closer inspection I see that there are hundreds of white thread like worms on top of my bogwood….

I wasn’t sure if it was worms or just a different type of algae, so I turned the filter off to stop any water movement, and lo and behold, these guys are crawling all over the bogwood…definitely alive beings! And are very happy there it seems?

My heart has just sank right down into my feet here…. where did they come from? Should I be worried

I used potassium permanganate on my plants to kill of any nasties and put them in quarantine tank for several weeks before ever putting the plants into this new tank, and also I boiled the living daylights out of my bogwood.

I’m assuming they must have come from the Tetra plant substrate…that’s the only other possible source. Or, is it possible it could have come from the powdered up fish food I used last week for five days with my automatic feeder when I was away on hols? (I wanted to keep my bacteria alive)

They appear to be feeding off the left over powdered fish food and wood. I'm naturally thinking I need to do a big clean up to remove the old fish food and algae etc...

But are they harmful? Is it curtains for my tank? Will I have to start over?

Edited: because I keep leaving words out! Doh!

 

[fatheadminnow]

In the middle of my fishless cycle….started into it 3 weeks ago on 4th Feb.

Its an 22gal tank with organic substrate, black quartz gravel, pre-soaked bogwood, live plants and some mature filter media from my other tank.

My water stats this morning were:
Ammonia: 1ppm
Nitrite: Sky high
Nitrate:40ppm
pH:7.2

I was studying the tank there, just before doing a water change (I wanted to just clean up the tank a bit and dilute some of my nitrates) and I was wondering what I was going to do with all the long haired algae that are growing and to my surprise I noticed some odd movement on my bogwood.

On closer inspection I see that there are hundreds of white thread like worms on top of my bogwood….

I wasn’t sure if it was worms or just a different type of algae, so I turned the filter off to stop any water movement, and lo and behold, these guys are crawling all over the bogwood…definitely alive beings! And are very happy there it seems?

My heart has just sank right down into my feet here…. where did they come from? Should I be worried

I used potassium permanganate on my plants to kill of any nasties and put them in quarantine tank for several weeks before ever putting the plants into this new tank, and also I boiled the living daylights out of my bogwood.

I’m assuming they must have come from the Tetra plant substrate…that’s the only other possible source. Or, is it possible it could have come from the powdered up fish food I used last week for five days with my automatic feeder when I was away on hols? (I wanted to keep my bacteria alive)

They appear to be feeding off the left over powdered fish food and wood. I'm naturally thinking I need to do a big clean up to remove the old fish food and algae etc...

But are they harmful? Is it curtains for my tank? Will I have to start over?

Edited: because I keep leaving words out! Doh!

Check this out to try to identify what kind of worm it is.

[topic="100"]http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=275598[/topic]

-FHM

 

[Athena]

These little white worm are quite common and yes, it probably was the powdered fish food that encouraged them. I had a bout of them in one of my tanks the other month at a time when I had lots of fry and couldn't gravel vac - and plus I was feeding fry food (starting with liquid form Liquifry then onto the finely powdered Liquifry) - that's when the white specks appeared everywhere in the tank. In fact, on the liquifry bottle it does warn that these little white worms can appear (sorry, can't remember the actual name of them now).

They don't look very nice but apparently are quite harmless to your tank and some fish even eat them.

Well, as soon as my fry were a little bigger and I was able to start gravel vacs again, the white things disappeared and I've not seen them since.

Athena

ps - just remembered this post earlier today by someone with same problem:

http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?showtopic=276124

 

[Lazerus]

Thanks for both links!!!! Very helpful.

Fatheadminnow, that link was very interesting…although, the pics are not very pretty!!!

So judging by the photos in that link, they could be two possibilities...

"Planaria" or the "Misc. 'Wormy things' "

Good to know that they are harmless...that is a big relief.

 

[waterdrop]

My first guess would be that its the Planaria. Very common during fishless cycling. I had it in mine during fishless cycling. The difference though, which makes me hesitate a bit on the diagnosis, was that mine seemed free floating and evenly distributed out in the water (very tiny and hard to see) whereas you describe yours as all staying on the bogwood (or can you see them free floating too?) If its Planaria, they are truly harmless, and that's probably true for most of the other possibilities too.

Actually another way to think about this is not to forget that the ideal thing you want right now is a nice "bacterial growing soup", not a pristine sterile environment. The same soup that the bacteria will like is one that the little worms will like too. And remember that once you have fish there's no way you'd have a problem as the fish would be quite delighted to find some nice fresh live food and would make quik work of these things!

~~waterdrop~~