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Small White Hitchhikers from new moss. Please help me identify


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Hello all! I recently introduced some Christmas moss to my aquarium and snail breeding box. This morning when I went to feed the tank, I noticed that in my breeding box there were these tiny little things moving around on the plastic. They aren’t round (almost rice like) not jumping around are super fast and tiny. There’s a few wormlike things in the mix too. The worms are moving around like inchworms. Should I be alarmed? I don’t mind hitchhikers if they are harmless, but would like to know what I have going on here. Thank you so much for your time. 

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Edited by Paul R
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Just a sign of a healthy ecosystem! The longer ones look to be detritus worms and once settled they'll move into your substrate and munch on whatever your livestock don't get to. Shorter ones I'm not able to identify based on photo alone but they're almost certainly another type of nematode. Your fish will probably snack on the ones that get too far from your plants/substrate and they're generally harmless.

Generally parasites need a host in order to be introduced to your system, so unless you were introducing fish at the same time it's very unlikely that you're going to introduce something harmful to your fish when you add plants to a tank. There are exceptions but it's pretty rare and basically all of them require a microscope to diagnose. This low risk is why the vast majority of aquarists don't quarantine plants.

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