Small black hair like worms

seanrsolutions · Sep 1, 2013

Hello Everyone,

Here's the question...
I woke up this morning and noticed that I have thousands of black small worms. They look hair like and don't appear to be bristleworms. I took a bag of the to my LFS and they don't have any idea what they are. They are about 1/8 of an inch long or smaller. They are very skinny and fine like a peice of hair. No thicker. No legs... and move very slowly. All of them are black. At first, I thought they were debri until I saw them moving. They are not fish poop.

Here is some stats and history on my tank:
Tank has been cycled about 2 months. It's a new tank. Started with all base rock and seeded with a small 2lb live rock. I have a 100 gallon tank. Approx. 100Lbs of live rock. 80 - 100Lbs of live sand. 3 Chromis, 1 Diamond Goby, 1 Horse Shoe crab, 2 turbo snails and about 7 hermit crabs. Seen lots of Copepods in my tank. Have man grove and mermaid fan plant. We had a bloom of diatom algae and then recently had Cyanobacteria which we treated about 2 days ago. All my stats in the tank are good, 0 ammonia, 0 NitrItes, and about 5ppm NitrAtes.

Hope this give enough info. I include pictures. I really want to know what these are, are they harmful and if they are how do I get rid of them. I will try to upload better pictures later.

Thank you for your assistance!

Shadowsfold · Sep 3, 2013

I'm not positive it's the right answer or if they'd survive in saltwater, but I've had drain fly larvae show up in my freshwater tank before, and they look a lot like that.

Joeysreef · Nov 8, 2013

a 6 line wrasse sould help in getting rid of them no clue on how long 1 wrasse would take to get it done for you.

hsong333 · Oct 15, 2018

I have the same problem and it’s all over the sand and rock. Did you find any method to control these hair-like worm?

Thank you in advance

Dancingmad · Oct 15, 2018

@hsong333

Welcome to R2R! Can you share some pictures of your case? If you can get a pic of your worms with your white lights instead of blues even better! This thread is from 2013 and I see the previous posters haven't been around for quite some time. I don't know what these worms are, but maybe we can slide this to the hitchhiker & critter ID section.

P.S. Pictures help. I think I mentioned that

. Best chance of IDing your specific critter.

#mods can we slide this thread over to the hitchhiker & critter ID section?

Crabs McJones · Oct 15, 2018

Dancingmad said:
@hsong333

Welcome to R2R! Can you share some pictures of your case? If you can get a pic of your worms with your white lights instead of blues even better! This thread is from 2013 and I see the previous posters haven't been around for quite some time. I don't know what these worms are, but maybe we can slide this to the hitchhiker & critter ID section.

P.S. Pictures help. I think I mentioned that . Best chance of IDing your specific critter.

#mods can we slide this thread over to the hitchhiker & critter ID section?