# Ahhh! Please verify these little worms are harmless!



## rtro92 (Aug 19, 2012)

I fed my fish some brine shrimp I hatched, and I wanted to get a closer look at the tiny little newly hatched brine shrimp that were on the bottom. I looked at them with a magnifying glass monocle, and found little tiny white worm/parasites abundant in my tank.
After a bit of research, I believe they are the parasite known as Planaria.

Can someone verify this? I want to make sure that I shouldn't begin treating for something else. If they are planaria, I've learned that it's brought on by having a dirty tank, so I'll do some thorough cleaning over the next few weeks.
I took the picture with a camera looking through the magnifying glass, it worked out ok and you can get an idea of how small they are. You can see how small they are by gauging it with the brine shrimp shell next to it. The giant carrot looking thing is actually fish waste. These parasites are tiny, I never would have noticed them without using a magnifying glass. They are thinner than a human hair.
It's pretty cool to look at the tank with a magnifying glass if you haven't done so already 

What do you guys think? So far image searches all match up closely, but I want to see if anyone had any input or advice.
Plus it's a pretty cool picture!


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## lohachata (Jan 27, 2006)

planaria are harmless...many fish will even eat them...they usually appear when there is too much food in the tank..we have it in the tank where the dwarf royal farlos are spawning..lots of fry being fed lots of food..


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## weedkiller (Nov 18, 2012)

Im impressed how the pic looks quite clear considering how you took it...
well done


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## C. King (Dec 14, 2012)

Yep, kinda cool. I didn't know whether to be fascinated, grossed out, or impressed! Can't wait to check out my substrate with a magnifying glass! Or not...


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## rtro92 (Aug 19, 2012)

What a relief!
If you want to see these little guys make sure the magnifying glass is at least 20x,
I believe that's what mine is. The glass is almost an inch thick. I also tried it with a 5x and can't see anything, it still looked cool though ;-x


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## kcrunch (Aug 17, 2012)

Funny to see this post, I was doing some filter maintenance and in the bottom of the canister I saw movement of what looked like tons of larva much smaller than mosquito larva in water but never the less it was there. I saw it as I was removing some of the sand from in the filter holding the canister tilted the light glimmered off of the translucent green Eheim container and there they were. Makes me wonder not so often when I take in a gulp of tank water do they survive and for how long LOL....


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## lohachata (Jan 27, 2006)

Planaria will go away when you stop overfeeding the fish....
i have a 20 high that has lots of planaria...and strange little snails too....but i pay them no mind as they are helping out with the overfeeding..in that tank are our dwarf royal farlowellas , Sturisomatichthys Leightoni...1 male...4 females....and about 75 or so fry..
we feed the tank heavily 4-5 times a day....these fry do not move around like other fish...they just hang on the glass r other objects in the tank...easy to get them to breed..
almost impossible to get the fry to survive....so far , so good but we are keeping our fingers crossed...we have to move the adults soon because they are getting ready for another round of back to back spawns.....they will go into a 40 long...

don't let Planaria bug you...they are quite harmless and will die out once they run out of food..


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