What on earth are these!?

[Friendlyfishies]

My snail tank is having a filter issue so I was inspecting the tank for cracks, there are no cracks, for some reason the filter is pushing water out of the filter backwards, not sure what do do about that ...but upon inspecting the tank I see hundreds of tiny white specs, the size of salt swimming around the plants, in the water and on the glass! They are perfectly white, they dont look like worms at all, from what I can see it looks like little round bodies with 2 big forearms! I googles, water fleas, planaria and daphnia, its not any of these things. There are no fish in the tank, just snails, live anubias, java and moss balls, gravel and sea shells. Most of the plants were in Moonies old tank, never saw these in there before. Guessing they came from the sea shells or the snails (sea shells were dried from the craft store, leading me to believe more than likely the snails). Im just hoping they arent a parasite. Thoughts on what these are?

They can swim and crawl.

Edit! They arent forearms, they are on the back of the critter and they have antennas...there are also what look like mini shrimp babies running around with long tail! So there are 2 different little critters in there lol

[Friendlyfishies]

I think the round ones with big things on the back are copepods!? Are they harmful? Where on earth did they come from??? Will they get bigger in size? Could I feed these to my betta lol?
http://fish.washington.edu/people/cordell/gallery.html

Still not sure what the other one is.

[Oldfishlady]

If you can see them-they most likely are not a parasite per se or at least harmful to healthy adult fish. We have lots and lots of critters in our tanks...some that we see and a bunch that we don't see....All natural part of our little ecosystem we have created, however, since this is a closed system-they can become over populated since they may not have any natural predators. Some fish will eat them-but mainly its the water changes that keeps the numbers in check.

You get a lot of these things in the tank from live plants and live foods-but you also get them from the air-Spore floating around, from flying critters etc....And from the critter fairy that sneaks in at night and seeds the tank...just kidding....sometimes it seems like that since they seem to appear out of nowhere.....lol.....

[Friendlyfishies]

That would make sense OFL, I cant vaccum the snail tank as its on the bottom shelf and wont hold a suction so ive been just stirring the substrate and scooping water out with a cup, thats probably why their population bloomed. They are really cute and as long as they arent parasitic im a happy camper lol, parasites scare the daylights out of me! I do everything I can to keep my fish healthy enough to steer clear of those yucky beasts. I hope they grow a little bigger, the betta needs the protein and I was looking into getting brine shrimp, this might help though in the mean time if they get big enough for him to see and eat ??

[Friendlyfishies]

AAHH theres some wormy looking things swimming around too!? They are really skinny with wiggly tails and float through the water til they find a plant, they too are white, are they harmful?

[DoctorWhoLuver]

I had the white wormy things in my turtle tank, and they turned out to be maggots :O

[Friendlyfishies]

EWE! I dont think thats what these are. They arent flat/planaria worms either, im still worried about the whole parasite thing, could the worms be parasitic and if they are will they harm me or any of my other critters?

They kind of look like these!? I dont want round worms! Can I catch these myself!?
http://www.theaquariumwiki.com/Nematode

either way I think I will keep this tank Qt'd, I dont want my bettas to get worms :/ I was almost nearly thinkign about putting my snails in there eventually...I think these little worms just ruined it. I just really hope I can catch it either.

[Oldfishlady]

See if this link will help you ID your critters....usually the critters in our tanks are not an issue for us.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/drosera1/fish/worms.htm

[Friendlyfishies]

looks like a true worm mostly, I just hope its one of the non parasitic ones lol.

They seem to be covering the moss balls, they blend in so well with the moss hairs I would never have seen them if I hadnt seen swimming around when I turned the filter back on.

[aokashi]

XD they look like cyclops :) nummy