Little brown worm

[guggas]

I stopped into my LFS on Saturday and ended up buying a pair of GBR and a school of cardinal tetras. The cardinals didn't look that good and I should have resisted. I threw them into my quarantine tank with a few rummynose tetras that were already in there. Ten of the twelve cardinals died already, the other two seem to be doing decent but not great. This evening I saw a brown worm about 1/8-inch long swimming in the water. It looked like a mosquito larvae, but smaller. He landed on the bottom and I watched in horror as one of the gbr's slurped him up. Any idea what that worm is and how to treat it?

[Altum Nut]

God know what LFS have in there water....It could have been some sort of freshwater leech, compost worm, blackworm?????
Without actually seeing the worm it's anybody's guess. Take a walk in the LFS and see if you see any others in their tanks.
Difficult to treat what is unknown at this point. Maybe some salt to try and help pass what was ingested.

...Ralph

[DJW]

It might be one of these, an Oligochaete:

http://aquariummicrogallery.blogspot...ete-worms.html

They grow to 1/6th inch, and you can only see the bristles with a magnifier. The Rams will eat them, and if you keep the tank clean they will go away. If they get into a tank with substrate you might have them in low numbers for a long time.

[guggas]

So I hadn't seen any more worms for awhile, but today I saw one. I decided to try going through AL's quarantine method that I've seen posted here. I took all my fish out and put them in a bucket with some methylene blue, did a 100% water change and then put the fish back in the tank with a dose of prazi. When I was netting the fish back into the tank I also netted about a dozen worms back in with them. That's the most I've seen at once. The prazi didn't seem to be hurting them but idk maybe it takes time. You can see one of them swimming around in this video if you watch close. https://youtu.be/4npTiiXQBzs

[DJW]

I had worms like that, I think they came in with some mosquito larvae, or maybe on some plants. I could not get rid of them all, no matter how clean I kept the tank. I tried all the worming meds in a fishless tank and they did nothing against these worms, even at double doses.

In a bare bottom tank, I think they reproduce in the sponge filter. The cleaner you keep the tank and filters, the less of them you will see. Tetras do a better job eating them than the Rams.