I had admittedly neglected any gravel vacuuming for quite some time on this little 2.5 gallon tank. It's so dang small it's annoying trying to work in there. But I occasionally noticed these little guys near the bottom of the tank over the last ~2 weeks. Quick Google led me to believe they're most likely detritus worms. I couldn't get a decent picture to confirm, but it did convince me to finally get a tiny gravel vac. Just did a water change, and shined a light on the water to try to attack any shrimpletes I might have accidentally sucked up. I didn't see any (yay) but several of these worms flocked to the light. Since they're being nice and cooperative, I figured I'd grab some photos and video to see if you lovely people can confirm for me and put my mind completely at ease from here.

Context on the tank: 2.5 gallon amano shrimp grow out tank. There's 3, which I bought as juveniles. I just don't want to risk them getting eaten in the community tank, so I'm letting them get a bit bigger. This tank is running an internal sponge-and-bioball filter powered by air pump. There are also a couple ghost shrimp shrimpletes in there, from a couple ghost shrimp previously temporarily housed in the tank. This tank came to me maybe 6 months ago, with a single platy in it, who is now in a much more appropriate 25 gallon community tank. There was a lot of mulm from it running with the platy and no filter for 4 years, if the history I was given is correct. I almost never feed the tank at this point, aside from adding a very small, very diluted dose of BatcerAE once or twice a week. There's some wood and live plants, a thin layer of aquarium gravel, and a bunch of snails in there as well (MTS, and I believe bladder & pond). I will be working to trap and reduce the snail population for bioload. But in any case the shrimps seem to be finding enough to eat among all that, so I don't feed much, to keep from just adding waste to the water. I'll add a picture of the tank in the comments, currently being refilled by drip.

Thanks!



Posted by Desert_Dandelion

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