Found these in my gravel today , bright red wiggly worms with a forked tail.

My guess is midge larvae or bloodworms but not sure where they could have come from. The only thing i can think of is I soaked a piece of driftwood in a bucket outside for a week. I cleaned and scrubbed it thoroughly - or so i thought.

The guppys have been nosing around in the gravel the last few days so obviously it's something they want to eat but i just want to make sure they are not harmful. Will they eventually die out with water changes /gravel vacuumes?

Found these in my gravel today , bright red wiggly worms with a forked tail.

My guess is midge larvae or bloodworms but not sure where they could have come from.

My money is on the midge larvae coming from midges. Unless my entire understanding of animal reproduction is flawed...

Free fish food. :bounce:

Could be live blood-worms i guess.

My brother once fed his frog frozen blood-worms, the next day, about a quarter of them were swimming around in the water.

I had a similar problem when I was feeding too much cucumber. Some people told me here that they were tubifex which feed on excess nutrients. There were worm casings in the filter as well. I cut back on feeding and increased cleaning and in no time they were gone.

Midge larvae are blood worms , they create the casings to keep themselves safe.

Free food!

yep they're blood worms, we get them from the sludge on the bottom of our throughs

Mosquitoes laid eggs in your tank!

Mosquitoes laid eggs in your tank!

Midge larvae do not hatch from mosquito eggs.

I thought they are non-biting midges.. Aren't they close to mosquito family? if not, my bad

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chironomidae

searched good ol' wiki haha but yeah I guess they aren't really mosquitoes.

well there's less of them now. Any I find get given to the female betta and now she recognises the container I put them in and swims right into it and has a feast. I've found one casing which i guess must be from them.