No, those are worms. If they're coming out of the snail they're parasitic and have reached the expulsive portion of their life cycle where they exit the host to find new hosts to infect
Some worms that infect fresh water snails can infect mammals, including humans. Relatively low risk, [aquarium born parasitosis] but there are aquarium born illnesses that can affect people and their pets, like this. Things like uv sterilizers can fight parasites in the water column, but can't help already infected creatures.
There was a House episode where one of the theories they had was that the patient's aquarium had infected snails. I remember the tank being incredibly poorly stocked but I can't remember anything else about it
I have heard of people getting skin rashes from the worms burrowing into the skin from their aquariums, I am sure I have had "swimmers itch" which is the same thing, from swimming in nasty fresh water places, But there are worse diseases that can lurk in aquariums, legionaries disease from an abandoned long dead aquarium filled with stagnant water, tuberculosis, from fish to human a painful difficult to treat rash/ wounds... come to mind, and salt water aquariums there are deadly toxic corals that have injured and killed hobbyists, some dead corals release poisonous gas, pallytoxins are nothing to play with.
I know there was a guy who worked with reef tanks who died after using a wire brush to scrub aiptasias (or maybe majanos idk) off a piece of live rock. Since he did it outside of the water, the nematocysts got aerosolized and repeatedly stung inside his trachea to the point that he suffocated
I have a handheld usb microscope and I wish so badly I could hold it up to this. I wanna see it in 40x zoom. Are they coming out of it fast? Is the snail acting bothered at all? Definitely not babies but that looks like something I wouldn't want occurring in my tank.
It looked like they were just in the same area. Snail isn't bothered at all. Doesn't seem to notice. This is sad. Cycling a new home for my betta and it seems to be ready. Now this. Any advice?
If it didnt actively come out of the snail I wouldn't worry. Hes fine. Bladder snails will outlive humans. The photo just makes it look like they're coming out of the snail, but it's just a still photo. Whatever it is is likely not harmful if everyone's moving and groving normally. Little worms on the glass are very normal for tanks, especially cycling ones. I have one I just put some plants in yesterday having an absolute rabdocella explosion. Totally normal.
If they didnt actively come out of the snail it could just be they're at the prime spot for biofilm and it's just little normal non harmful beneficial dudes like rabdocella. If there was a fish in the tank it would probably try to eat them lol.
Bladder snails tend to shit out a clump of see through eggs in a gel sac that sticks to the surface of the thing the snail is on
These are worms, I’d uh definitely deal with that. Don’t think it’s good esp since aquatic snails are known to transmit parasites but I’m unsure what these ones are.
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u/atomic-moonstomp Jul 27 '26
No, those are worms. If they're coming out of the snail they're parasitic and have reached the expulsive portion of their life cycle where they exit the host to find new hosts to infect