I thought some of you might find this interesting. I only have 2 tanks set up and this is what happened in my invert tank.
About 8mo ago I brought a peice of bog wood out of the yard and promptly placed it into some boiling water. This cleared out all the spiders that were living in the little caves that go through the wood, and satisfied i put it into a 10g aquarium. I was just leaving this tank up to breed some cherry shrimp, but i got 4 males. I guess the wood wasn't boiled completely because 2 types of worms appeared and were growing in population within the first 2 weeks. One worm was very much like a hairless catepellar, and the other basically a very light tan worm that resembles a CBW. I thought maybe these worms would be hazardous to my fishes health, so i put some prazi in the water and the catepillars died off.
I guess some of the tan-CBW survived by living in the sand substrate and not having to deal w/ the prazi in the water column. They have survived in low numbers dispite some scarlet badis and AFF being in the tank. None of the fish seem to be hurt by eating these, although time may tell differently. I see 5-20 w/ their tail end up in the air pushing the mulm from the substrate high enough, about an inch up, that the filter current picks this stuff up. At their highest population when there were just shrimp in the tank they probably numbered in the 100s. Now numbering only in the dozens, i'm going to rebuild the population and introduce them to the main tank as it becomes more densely planted. They definately provided a food source for the scarlet badis that QT'd in the tank. They are about 1mm thick, and maybe 4" long.
I have wondered if these critters would be advantageous to the soil health. Browsing the internet revealed next to nothing, I imagine they would have a hard time in most aquariums because there really isn't a benthic zone. I would suspect that if they did a superb job at removing mulm, that the depth of soil recieving some water circulation would increase...that's good right?
Maybe someone can shed some light on their possible benefits. I just think it's interesting to add another layer of complexity to this.
Worms and soil health
I have wondered myself, but have little to add. I think the biggest risk would be population boom and bust, where the population crash could be serious pollution. If they are really similar to CPW, import of some Cory cats would definitely control population. I am a bit doubtful that you could get a big population boom at normal tank depths and oxygenation levels.
Where's the fish? Neptune
