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ID help - what is this pink thing coming out of my substrate?


Snjchris
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Hello fellow Nerms, 

Can you help me identify these pink clumps growing out of my gravel substrate? My puffer and super red plecos don't care for them. I don't feed BBS or other microscopic foods in this tank. I feed a lot of pleco pellets, repashy and frozen foods (daphnia/bloodworms) daily. Water gets changed daily or every other day. Other tank inhabitants include ramshorn snails and cherry shrimp.

These things grow in clumps. When I gravel vac, they didn't like to be sucked out and died quickly (color changed very quickly to this yellow, dirt color). This is a freshwater tank.

Thank you in advance!

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On 10/27/2022 at 11:55 AM, BlueLineAquaticsSC said:

My first thought was also some sort of detritus worm, which as far as I know are usually more beneficial for a tank than harmful, as they provide food for fish and help break down waste. 

I am hoping they are worms too but so far I haven't seem the baby puffers take a bite at them. I will look into fungus bloom just out of precaution. 

I do have the normal kind of detritus worms in my tank. These don't move and grow out from a clump down from the substrate. 

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Looks like some kind of detritus worms - tubifex, blackworms, other un-named worm.  Looks like clean up crew and fish food, to me.  Doesn’t look anything like a fungus to me but it would be interesting to get under the microscope.  Do they retract if touched?  If yes, worms, not fungus.

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