I bought some plants today at a LFS a couple of hours away from my city. I just got home and noticed through the bag there was a really long and thin worm wriggling around in the bottom, tangled in the roots of a vallisneria. This this was LONG and really elastic like, and the colour was blood red. It broke into sections when I tried removing it, and one of the sections burrowed down into the leaves of the Val. I cut that leaf off and scooped it out. What the heck is this thing and should I not use the plants I bought from the store?? I had a huge bag of vals, I'd rather not waste them. Help!
So here's the thing, I'm quite familiar with tapeworms (I work in a Veterinarian clinic) and this thing was certainly not that. It was long, slimy and stretchy and the colour was a bright blood red. It was awful. The plant the worm was on was from a plant only tank, but there were other plants in the same bag that he gave me out of their display tank that had a school of tetras in it.
That's what it looks like when I google it! But really, really long! Should I throw the plants away? I can't see any more on the roots but I'm not sure I want to deal with an outbreak of parasitic worms..
Let's think of this in business terms - how much did you pay for the plants and how much is the health of the aquarium for you? I'd vote throw away the plants, return them to the store with that gross worm!!!
Bump: And to think I'm asking if it's ok to drink tank water...
Totes, but if she bought 30 bucks of plants and risks having this worm in her tank, I'd say just return the plants and the worm, it's gross and creepy!!!
I would say California black worms as camallanus worms are not reported to reach that length. Though also important to note a great deal of living specimens will appear much longer after death due to their body "relaxing."
I've had them before with no issues.
Other very important note: everything has something else living on or in it. What many people (though higher number of women) have growing on their eyelashes would make you squirm. So ladies next time your in a makeup artist's chair you better make sure he or she uses a sterile wand.
Also, with the amount of live stock from points all around the world coming through any LFS you really can think of them as you would any large airport hub
And though many discourage the use of medications....I prophylacticly treat everything before it goes into one of my tanks.
No idea what you've got , but considering the drive to return them , and that the plants are probably ok , I think that I'd make up a supersaturated salt solution , maybe in a gallon jar or similar , do a quick rinse of each of the vals and whatever other plants are in the tank,30 seconds or so . If you're lucky the salt will stun whatever is in the plant's roots and it'll fall off . Then rinse the plants thoroughly in fresh water and transfer into a quarantine tank . Probably also a good idea to move the fish out temporarily ,drain as much of the tank water as possible ,pull the filter , and heavily salt/or bleach the substrate . Rinse everything off and reassemble . Hopefully your tank is relatively small .This is what I had to do a while back when I got an infestation of huge (2-3") leech like flatworms .Think they came in small with blackworms or maybe some plants .Looked like kuhli loaches swimming around . Scared the crap out of me first time I saw one , ended up there must have been 25-30 in the gravel . The plants cleaned up nice , the tank took massive amounts of bleach to do them in . Luckily they were only in one tank.
Its an old thread I know, but it's likely a freshwater ribbon worm, probably Apatronemertes albimaculosa. They are predatory and eat other worms, copepods, leftover fish food and there are anecdotal accounts of them eating young shrimp and the like. They hang out in plant roots during the day and come out at night to hunt.
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