5.5.5 The Worm

[Miss Ruhnke]

Iwondered how many of you have used Fenbendazole for the nematode type worms...they might be detritus but according to the link Soothing posted they don't look like the d. worms there. I am SICK of those things ruining my enjoyment of my Blue Neo tank!! I would like to get rid of most of them...I know I can't get rid of all..but they are too numerous for my liking. I don't want to do anything that will affect the shrimp (and I have nerites) negatively. What do y'all think? Scooping them out with a net is getting tiresome.

I don't have tons of them but there is always one or two when I look....I am getting MTS for the tank so that might help. I also have eliminated some of the planted area and am using the driftwood for all the moss and java ferns. I think they are just left over from having too much crowding of plants so I don't think killing them will change the parameters. The filter is overkill...ehiem cannister..for small 6g tank but where I have the tank I didn't want to see a big filter. (also a sponge filter and mini oxydator).

I have used Fenbendazole in two of my tanks one with berried shrimp and shrimplets. It did not seem to have any negative effect on the shrimp. I originally thought I had planaria and kind of freaked out but im pretty sure I have harmless nematodes. The Fenbendazole did not do anything to get rid of the nematodes. I have decided that if they dont seem to be doing harm I will leave them alone. The one tank has quite alot of them.

I guess unless we put fish in there then there is nothing to do for it. I am tempted to drop a couple of Celestial Pearl Danios in there before I get shrimplets. I know they will eat the worms because I've seen them. Wonder if that will delay the shrimp breeding? I had shrimp in with the CPDs at one time and they didn't bother them.

Ive heard some people say they are completely shrimp safe and some say not and others say provided there are hiding place they will fine for shrimplets. I have also heard good success with Chili Rasboras they are really tiny looking at their mouth I dont even know if a newly hatched shrimplet could fit in it.

Thanks, Shrimpie. I don't see the point of using it if it would not kill the nematodes. I have the Chili Rasboras as well as the CPDs so I may lasso a couple and put them in the shrimp tank for a day or so. Some of the nano fish that they say are shrimp safe are not. The Dwarf Emerald Rasboras I have are agressive towards shrimp. I have never seen them actually eat one but they will butt them with their mouths so I am thinking it would just be a matter of time before a shrimp is missing body parts! I had to put some shrimp in the community tank for a short time because I did not have a spare tank for them when their tank developed problems.

Well, I have found a way to exterminate nematodes/detritus worms in my Blue Dream tank!! I put six Celestial Pearl Danios and two Chili Rasboras in there about half an hour ago and they are a "worm posse"! They are chasing these things down and almost fighting over them. It looks like the worms are coming out of the cannister filter. I had noticed a reduced flow a couple of weeks ago and when that problem was fixed (air in the line) the worms started appearing in the tank. I'm going to leave the fish in the tank for a while. They show absolutely no interest in shrimp...just waiting by the place where the worms appear. It's like feeding fish live just hatched brine shrimp. Hopefully I have not done anything to mess up the balance in this tank by introducing the fish for a few hours. Just thought you all should know what these little fish can do. Definitely the CPDs are the ones that will stalk every single worm and eat it. I am loving this all natural solution to an unsightly problem...worth keeping these fish for that purpose although these little guys are incredibly beautiful and cool in their own right. They are my favorite fish anyway.

The fish probably shows no interest in shrimp because they have a good food supply. When I was underfeeding my guppies and placed a shrimp inside, the guppies immediately attacked the shrimp. Now I'm breeding guppies in the main tank. No need to move fry because the adults might eat them. Safe to say they only attack when hungry. I feed BBS 3 times a day and never seen an adult eat the fry ever since. Just placed a few malawa shrimp in the tank and guppies show no interest as well.

Ha! Well they definitely had plenty of wiggle worms to eat!! Did a great job but I am thinking I will breakdown the canister filter on that tank and get them out as much as I can. Then do the "water reset" Soothing does. I have the ADA tank, glass pipes and light because this tank is viewed from all sides and I wanted to have a hidden filter. I don't like canisters I am finding out just because the HOB and sponge filters are so much easier for me to deal with. It's a pretty tank though...without the worms! What did you say you fed your guppies? BBS?

First let me say I am sorry. I am unable to post a picture of this thing. I will start at the beginning.

I bought this plant about a month and a half ago. It was a super market purchase. She was and is planted in coconut shell/bark medium. I have never replanted her. Her pot has some dirt but not a whole lot. I'd say very little dirt. I am using a 5.5.5 fish emulsion fertilizer on her every week until I can afford to get her an orchid fertilizer. It seems to be working though, because she is sprouting new buds from the spike.

Yesterday was fertilizer day. I fertilized her and sat her in the sink for about 6 minutes for the fertilizer to soak the bark, then I gave her a quick rinse with rain water like I always do on fertilizer day. I sat her in the sink again to drain out the excess water. I picked her up to put her back in her decorative pot when I noticed what looked like very tiny white roots on the inside plastic of the main pot. I looked closer and saw that these roots were moving! When one stopped moving it looked like very very thin white thread. They didn't seem to like the water I guess because they were wriggling to the top of the pot, but not out of the pot.

My Phal is healthy. Some of the top roots are dying but a phal expert told me not to worry about them, as they often will die when new roots are replacing them. Her bottom roots are all green and firm as they should be. Her leaves are a beautiful olive green as is the norm with a healthy Phal. She gets watered every Saturday and fertilized either on Tuesday or Wednesday. Like I said above, she is getting ready to drop her 6 flowers, as she is budding new buds from fresh green spikes.

I must say, I have seen these worms before. I saw them in my tomato plant I had last year. They were in the over flow tray of a pot I have and there were a lot of them. I saw them right after I had watered my tomato plant. I removed the tray and washed them down the drain, sterilized the tray and returned it to the pot. No more worms after that. I did go on Google to find out what they are but I can't seem to get the right identification for it. They aren't horse hair worms, and not planariums, definitely aren't milipede or centipede larvae either. I don't know what they are. In fact I haven't seen a picture of them yet. And they are SO TINY. I wouldn't have gave a second thought about them if I hadn't seen them moving.

Any help would be appreciated. I don't think I can re-pot my Phal as she is still in bloom and budding, and doing so while she is in this stage is ill advised.

Thank you in advance for any and all help.

When a disk infected with Autostart is mounted on a Power PC Mac running QuickTime 2.0 or later the worm, a file named "DB" is launched. It is a hidden application file with the creator listed as "????". It copies itself to the Extensions folder. It changes its name to "Desktop Printer Spooler", a file which will also be hidden. Autostart then restarts the computer.

Autostart is automatically launched when the computer is restarted. Every thirty minutes the worm checks mounted volumes and infects uninfected volumes, placing the hidden file "DB" at the root of the drive.

After checking the mounted volumes, the worm looks for files ending in "cod", "csa", and "data" with data forks over 100 bytes. Files with names ending in "dat" are targeted if their resource and data fork size total more than 2 megabytes. These files are overwritten with up to a megabyte of garbage. The first byte is set to zero, which will cause the worm to overlook the file the next time it looks at it.

In Hong Kong it spread to many advertising agencies, output bureaus, publishing houses, and printers in Hong Kong, including the BBDO agency. From there, it made it to Taipei, Taiwan. By May 4, it made its first landing in North America in Vancouver, BC, Canada. By June 7, it had reached the North American eastern seaboard, with a massive outbreak in Atlanta.

CorelDRAW 8.0 for Macintosh CD-ROMs were shipped with the worm in October of 1998. While Corel claimed that this problem was spotted before the worm reached customers, it still had to recall some CDs.

3a8082e126