What is this larvae?

Good evening,

My wife is has become what I fondly refer to as a "crazy fish lady". She has multiple fish tanks and all of them are planted tanks. This evening we found a strange white worm / larvae stuck between two blades of grass. Not knowing what it is, she immediately pulled it out and put it into a breeder canister. I am hoping that perhaps someone here can identify it. Thanks in advance!

Ian

It might help if you could crop and expand the image to enhance the white thing. Does the white thing move? Just from the supplied image it just looks like a gap in the green.

I will not be able to offer an answer even if you supply a better image but it MAY help others help.

Is this a newer plant? If so, and the plant was not sterilized, it could possibly be a crustation that came along with the plant. Don't know if it still applies today but many years ago such additions were common with live plants.

So she posted it on reddit who seems to think that it may be a caddis fly larvae, though how it got into the tank we have no idea. This planted tank is pretty well established the plants she has in it are all at least a few months old in the tank. Your guess is as good as mine. The thing itself is maybe just shy of a centimeter long, the grass blades maybe an inch. It definitely wiggles and moves around.

Unless you want to keep it as a pet, I'd suggest getting rid of it as you never know what it'll become. It might eat fish.

Lynnzer said:

Unless you want to keep it as a pet, I'd suggest getting rid of it as you never know what it'll become. It might eat fish.

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While I agree my curiosity would probably win out and I'd isolate to see what happened. Of course that could end up with my whole apartment being infected with something but, at least, my curiosity would be satisfied... Ya, I know that curiosity killed the cat but most people forget the second half of that. The whole saying is "curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought it back".

Hi Ian and welcome to the forum

It looks like a green bloodworm. Bloodworms are Chironomid midge larvae and are not normally green. They are usually red, brown or black. However, they do resemble the insect larvae in the picture. That one might be green due to the plant it is feeding on.

They normally live in a cocoon on the bottom of water ways and feed on microscopic organisms. In spring when the water warms up, they turn into adults and go off and breed. Adult Chironomid midge larvae do not bite people and are not blood sucking mosquitoes. The juveniles can sometimes take baby fish but don't normally cause any problems.

If you wife want to keep it and see what it turns into, put it in a tank with some plants and leave it to grow.

Colin_T said:

If you wife want to keep it and see what it turns into, put it in a tank with some plants and leave it to grow.

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I did that with a couple of critters I found in bags of daphnia.
Sadly they didn't survive but I learned a lesson from it. If it isn't needed squash the damn thing. I spent time attending to their needs than I should have done. I could have used the time better trimming plants or doing water changes.