Long white thread like worm thing

Question
I just took out a long white thread-looking worm-looking thing out of my 19 gallon aquarium.  I'm freaking out, I am afraid this is something that could make my family sick.  I HAD 2 jewel cichlids and 3 convict cichlids, along with 2 seemingly harmless rainbow shark, but the cichlids were terrorizing each other. I took out the cichlids and bought 4 guppys, 2 sunburst wag platys and 2 other platys, don't remember the kind.  We now have 4 fry from the one platy type. OH, and 4 ghost shrimp.  I feed tropical flakes and shrimp pellets for the bottom feeders.  One week or so later, everyone has ich.  So I treat with Rid Ich for 3 days.  Today, day 4, I see this worm like thing, stretching out and then curling up.  This think is at least 4 inches long, very thin, white, pointy at the one end I can see.  I'm thinking it could be thread, so I net it out, and once it's out, it's squirming almost impercetibly slow on a paper plate in my kitchen.  PLEASE tell me this poses no health threat to me and my family when our hands were naively in the water a week ago.  Full of anxiety in PA.

Answer
Hi Jessie,
 You should be fine unless you decide to eat it... which I imagine you probably won't...  actually even then, you would probably be perfectly fine.  

  The interesting thing about parasites is that they are often VERY host specific, meaning that a parasite for a fish cannot (even if he wanted to) survive in you.   The exception are various parasites which infect things like pigs.  Pig physiology and human physiology is so similar that many pig parasites do just fine in people (and vice versa I suppose) which is why it is so important to cook pork but less important to cook other meats (though still
a good idea).

  Bottom line: You can rest easy.  

-- Ron
  rcoleman@cichlidresearch.com
  Cichlid Research Home Page <http://cichlidresearch.com>