[BoxxerBoyDrew]

Hey Planted Tank People!!!

Happy New Year to ALL!!! I got a weird thing going on in my 15g tall tank that is basically a empty tank that is running. It is the tank I had my Swordtails in last year that had Columnaris, and I had to put all of them down. Well I emptied the tank removed all of the tiny bit of substrate that was there, blasted off the rocks with the high pressure hose, as well as the hoses and filter parts, and scrubbed the tank down real good, and gave everything a good rinse! I also threw away everything inside the Fluval 205 canister filter like the sponges, filter floss, and ceramic rings, because they are cheap enough to replace to not have to worry about spreading disease!

Well I put the empty canister together so it would run correctly, added the rocks back to the tank, filled it with water, and added bleach to the running EMPTY SYSTEM in a concentration I was taught when I worked at a LFS to sterilize a tank that was sick, or you didn't know what was in it before and wanted to start over from scratch and be 100% safe knowing NO Bugs or Diseases were left over from before!!! So anyway I ran it like that a few days, then drained the system, took it outside then flushed it till I could smell no more bleach. Then brought it back inside and set it back up and started it back up running 5X the normal amount of Prime. Usually you are done after that, but I went ahead and changed the water a extra time and again dosed the prime at 5x the amount, and it has been running ever since, EMPTY!

Well that was 7/15!!! I have NOT had the lights on since there is nothing to look at, and I did put in some new ceramic media and pre-filter sponges after the second time treating with the prime, since I was going to take the Rummy Nose Tetras out of my 55g to cycle the filter to go on the 40B, but I never did!

Skip to 3 days ago, and I was adding some water to the tank, and something caught my eye in the front corner of the tank! So I get my bright head light, and look, and it is a ball of small (1/2" long X less than 1mm in diameter) white worms!!! At first I thought they were dead, but when the light hits them they start wiggling around! They look like "Pin Worms" Animals or People can get, but there has been nothing living in the tank! There are glass lids on the tank, but there is the normal 1.5" gap in the rear, so I guess a Moth or May Fly could have gotten in there( they did when the Swords were in there cause the swords would tare them up, but they were coming to the lights) , but I see no signs of bug parts anywhere on the intake screen! I tried adding some Mardel Coppersafe since it says it is for external parasites, but it didn't bother them at all!!! But it is a few years old, actually I can't remember how old it is!!!

So what do Yall think these worms can be??? There is some "mulm" from dead algae that came off the rocks and has gathered under the rocks near the corner by the worms, and it has some in it too! If I shine the light at it long enough you can see them move around. I am fixing to need the filter and a few of the rocks for the 40B, and I DO NOT want to transfer a problem!!!

I am out of town at the moment, but I can see if my Son can get a Pic and post it for me!!! But I thought just maybe someone here might have run into them before!

THANK YOU for taking the time to read this and HELP me out!!!
Take Care!!!
Drew

 

[Betta132]

Tiny scavengers. Any tank that's left empty with any sort of plant or dirt material will develop a small population of scavengers, often things like copepods and little detritivore worms. They aren't parasites, they're just eating the gunk.

 

[BoxxerBoyDrew]

My deal is, I am just wondering where they came from and what are they living on??? The "mulm" I was talking about is dead algae/junk and is pinkish/clear. The majority of the worms hang out in a ball in a eddy current in the front left corner of the tank, and don't move unless I hit them with a bright light!

Since the tank was run with a STRONG Bleach/water combo for 3 full days, nothing should have survived! So they had to come from a flying insect from the house, or from New Life Spectrum Small Fish Formula Fish Food because I did start adding 10 pellets (.5mm dia) every other day on 1/15/16 to see if that would be enough to start a cycle, but after 10 days of that and no ammonia change I stopped! Thinking either some bacteria has already started from just running for so long, or it was not enough bio-load to kick off a cycle! I forgot about doing that till my Son read my notes I wrote on the front of the tank in Sharpie and told me about it on the phone today!

Anyway He tried to get some pics with his phone, but they wouldn't come out clear, so I will talk him through setting up the tripod and the digi camera tomorrow!

Thanks For the response Betta132, and by the way where in Central Texas are you? I am outside Waco myself! It's AWESOME to see another Texan on here!!!
Drew