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i just found these free swimming in my 29 gallon tank.. i have growing out L-333 from mark chen and a breeding group of calico long and shortfin ancistrus i havent seen any on the fish or coming out of the fish what are they? and no i havent fed any blackworms or bloodworms to this tank at all. they're thin and short and clumped together and were sticking to some christmas moss i have in there.. then they broke apart and started swimming seperately when i touched them.. not sure if they are bad and if so what should i treat with.. i have praziquantel in powder and liquid form here already

concensus of opinion elsewhere is they are from overfeeding or bad water quality.. i went 2 weeks without doing a water change instead of the normal 1 week and i did notice the water was murkier than normal and i do feed that tank rather heavily.. gonna put some cories in there and see if they eat them

I see them sometimes in tanks I feed heavily and don't vacuum the sand. I still see them even when I do 50% WC each week - just when I don't vacuum the sand. I think corys would love them!

Add cherry shrimp to the tank and they will clear out these things (and other similar).

Jools

Look`s like tubifex or something in that direction to me. What would be indeed a sign for bad water / overfeeding. Well fish will eat them sooner or later.

i have a large colony of cherry shrimp in my other pleco tank.. but i have L-333 in this tank and someone told me they think the 333 eat baby cherry shrimp.. can anyone confirm or deny this? its the only reason i didnt put them in there too.. im going to put some endlers or guppies in there next weekend and they should look cool and eat some of the worms too..

Hypancistrus don't eat cherry shrimp. I have both breeding in several tanks.

Jools

ok thanx jools ill move some over.. still probably gonna grab some endlers or endler/guppy hybrids.. they look pretty cool

Goodness me. The minute we see something in the tank it's 'bad'!
If you over feed then the trophic web expands or a few members increase in numbers.
That's how life works.
Just reduce the food a bit. Don't go reaching for poisons.

The more critters you have in a tank the more stable and healthy it becomes. I encourage it! As the Jools said - add some shrimp.
Remember these little worms are eating something else which is likely eating something else again. Kill the worms and the 'other things' population increases.

However, it's OK to forget to feed, not so good to forget water changes.

Microfex Aka dero worms great live food who can be co cultured with daphnia