Unidentified Worm Infestation

[SilverB]

Hi All

Its been a while since I posted, but I need your help.

I have a 20 litre nano aquarium - densely planted and housing 4 Cherry Shrimp

The other day I noticed a worm wriggling through the water column, it was light brown with a black head. I removed it with tweezers. I then noticed many more of them in a patch of moss which I subsequently removed.

I did some research and thought that the worms were Camallanus worms, and purchased a product to deal with them, which is currently in the post.

However, on further inspection, I noticed that the worms were making nests! They do not appear to be behaving like Camallanus worms and don't' appear to look like other common worms I've seen online.

Note that I haven't introduced any new plants of shrimp for going 6 months now and don't use any live feed. I had a few weeks where the aquarium was a bit neglected, but I did 50% water changes and a clean. I use Remineralised RO water. I've attached pictures - can you help me understand what these are and how to get rid of them. They don't appear to be disturbing my Shrimp which are behaving as normal, are brightly coloured, active and eating.

 

[SilverB]

Having done some more research on this topic, I believe these could be midges...
Does anyone have any advice/guidance for removing them? The infestation looks pretty far along so I may empty the whole aquarium and start from scratch

 

[Colin_T]

I was going to say bloodworms (Chironomid midge larvae) but picture 4 shows something that appears to have legs along the body. Bloodworms don't look like that one but they do build mucous tubes like the first picture.

Bloodworms are harmless and live in water bodies around the world. They hatch out in spring and don't cause problems to anything except small bite size food items (algae, baby shrimp).

If you want to remove them, just suck them out with a length of plastic hose.