Holy freakout! 100s, or 1000s, of tiny white worms in tank

[Jaybird]

Last week I put a male, female, pair of GBRs in my tank. I did a lot of reading one them and everyone says that they are quite delicate. My tank has been at 0 ammonia 0 nitrItes and never more than 10 nitrAtes (gotta love the plants).

When I added the new fish and re-arranged some plants, I seemed to have a little mini-cycle. Ammonia stayed at 0, but nitrItes went up. I did a few PWCs and everything calmed down. Yesterday I noticed that the male GBR is breathing very rapidly, staying at the bottom corners of the tank and not eating. The female seems fine. This morning I noticed that he kept one of his pectoral fins tight against his body and was still breathing rapidly and keeping in the rear corner.

I decided to give the tank a half-dose of melafix and pimafix (I heard that combining the two makes both more effective), as a preventative measure. Well, surprise, surprise!!!

Not five minutes after I added the melafix and pimafix to the water I noticed that the water looked a little cloudy. I got closer to the tank. There were hundreds or thousands of small hair-like strands floating in the water........then I saw some move!

The fish seemed to enjoy them, but I have no idea what they were, or are. I suspect that they are in the filterpad of my HOB filter. I'll have to change that tonight, but I know that is going to cause another mini-cycle and I don't want to stress the male GBR even more.

Has anyone else seen worms like that. They just looked like white strands and were about the thickness of a hair and only 2-4mm long. It totally freaked me out to see them in the tank.

 

[Apocalypse_Gold]

Most likely nematodes, most likely from overfeeding or lack of deep gravel vacuuming. They are usually in the gravel rather than the filter. Rinse the filter pad in non-chlorinated water and reuse it.

 

[Jaybird]

I'm going to do that. It was just freaky to see so many. The fish didn't seem to mind so much. They just got a free meal

 

[i3k]

I had something like that before...but they were not in the water...they were above the water on the tank walls up top...they are white at first and then they would turn a dark color...My tank was really dirty at that time...I basically did a 30% water change and cleaned the walls of the tank...after that they disappeared...as far as your fish breathing rapidly...what is the pH level in the tank?