Detritus Worms In Piranha Tank?

[laurac94]

Last week I noticed a tiny squirming white worm in my water column (about half a cm) so I removed it and did a large water change and gravel vacuum. I thought that because I only saw one it wouldnt be much of a problem. Today I have gone to clean the glass, when I looked closer I saw 10- 15 of these worms all along the glass. I am new to keeping piranha and realise they are very messy fish so I keep up with 30% water changes twice a week. I also have around 3x the amount of filtration needed for the water volume.
I have never seen these in any of my previous community tanks hence why I posted in this section.
Do I need to add extra filtration (considering getting a large external filter)
Does anyone know what these worms are and will they harm my piranhas?

I also tried to get a picture but they are so small they just didn't show up
Thanks for any help! D

 

[Mikey1]

they are called Planaria,
 
they will not harm your fish, normally caused by overfeeding, and alot of excess food lying around the tank, which is what they feed on.....cut back on the feeding and make sure you scoop out excess food quickly, i know that can be difficult with piranhas because they are so messy,
 
vaccuum your substate more often and thoroghly, that is where they mostly live and thrive

 

[laurac94]

Thank you!
I've just bought an external filter to replace my other filters which will filter just over 5x the volume of the tank and im going to get another gravel vacuum because my current one is abit rubbish hopefully that will help to sort out the problem along with feeding them less

 

[Mikey1]

Thank you!
I've just bought an external filter to replace my other filters which will filter just over 5x the volume of the tank and im going to get another gravel vacuum because my current one is abit rubbish hopefully that will help to sort out the problem along with feeding them less

)

 
i hope you are planning on using the old filter media in the new filter?

 

[laurac94]

Yeah don't worry im going to leave everything running for 14 days before I remove the old filters, I've also got a sponge filter in there im going to leave with my air pump.
Hopefully that will be adequate for the bacteria to multiply in the new filter media.

 

[snazy]

Yeah don't worry im going to leave everything running for 14 days before I remove the old filters,

 
 
14 days is not enough. Leave them as long as you can and if I were you and the old filters aren't obstructive, I'd leave them all running for good. A turnover of just 3x the water volume an hour isn't at all enough for a piranha tank but what you need is filters with bigger capacity, not just a turn over.

 

[laurac94]

The filter itself turns over more than 10x the volume of the tank per hour, ( about 3000 liters per hour I think) it says it is adequate for aquariums of 1250litres when my aquarium is about 250litres.
Just got it today and it's running great so far so I'll play it by ear for now and just keep up with regular water testing.
The current internal filters I have get in the way quite alot because they are so big hence why I decided to go with an external filter

 

[snazy]

The other option is to squeeze the internal filter media into the big filter instead. This would guarantee you'd save all the bacteria.
What type of filter is that you have? I've never heard of a single filter doing 3000L/H.
The recommendation by the manufacturers means nothing. It's all advertising. Look at the liter per hour/gallon per hour rating instead.
And the volume of the filter/filter's also needs to be 10% of the total volume of tank ideally. So for a 250L aquarium, you'd need filter/filters that can have 25 litre volume combined the least !!! But it's not an ideal world..

 

[laurac94]

Im really useless at typing.. It's an all pond solutions 2000l per hour external filter adequate for 1000 litres so combined with my largest internal filter thats about 3000l/h and about 1250 litres of filtration, think I'll leave the biggest one in there and take the other out but not until a few weeks.
The volume of the external filter is 20 litres so if I keep the internal filter in it will be about 22litres..not quite 25 but near enough until I get my bigger tank next year
Thanks for the advice and sorry for not clearly writing it at all before lol.

 

[snazy]

Thanks Laura.
Leaving one of the internals will give ensure redundancy should one of them underperforms or fails.
Good luck with the fish and hopefully we'll see a video of the tank soon

 

[laurac94]

Heres a pic, it's a little different from that now but about the same they were about 4" there and are about 7" now so a few months ago

 

[snazy]

They've made themselves invisible on that photo.
It must be a challenge to look after piranhas.

 

[laurac94]

They are facing the camera under the left bits of bog woodD and yeah they are because they are so messy hence this thread
Getting their mess under control though, extra filtration, extra gravel cleaning and cutting down on feeding

They get a bad reputation but are very timid fish really lol

 

[yargnits]

They are facing the camera under the left bits of bog woodD and yeah they are because they are so messy hence this thread
Getting their mess under control though, extra filtration, extra gravel cleaning and cutting down on feeding

They get a bad reputation but are very timid fish really lol

 
it sounds like you have things under control but it sounds like your fish are getting a bad rep. i doubt they are much more difficult than the requirements of most other fish and you seem to be doing most of them. 
 
good filtration and weekly water changes seem to be a good standard. you seem to be doing really well and i for one look forward to the updates