Worms in my tank

Question
Okay, so I have had this problem for the past 6 months I'd say.  It started in my 125 gallon tank with 2 oscars, 2 jack dempseys and an african cichlad.  My tank had many worms in the water, on the walls of the tank, on the fish scales.  They appear to be 1 cm, hair like thin, clear, possibly a red tint.  They do not look like they are attached to my fish but who knows.  I took a water sample to various pet stores who said my water levels were good and they thought that coppersafe would work.  It didnt.  anti-fluke worked for a week, they came back.  I bleached my tank and everything in it and treated my fish seperatly, which worked for about 2 weeks. they came back. A petstore gave me this dark blue stuff they use to treat the tank, it worked for about 5 days.  They are back.  Now I looked closer and there are tiny little white dots especially on the wall of the tank and they move! Are these the "worms" or maybe they are exotic water fleas? Also, they are in my 29 gallon with 1 jack dempsey and a small albino oscar. I did feed my fish feeder gold fish until the petstores told me they sometimes have these worms in their goldfish tank. Please help

Answer
Hi Mallory;

The little worms are just planaria or some other similar harmless creature. The tiny bugs are harmless too. I've had both in my tanks before. Both are totally harmless to your fish, but are a serious warning of something that is very harmful....overfeeding. They are thriving on all the excess waste and food that is in the tank. The only way to reduce or elminate them is to starve them out. I tried all the same methods you did many years ago before I knew what they were. Even the bleach. As you now know, these critters are pretty much indestructible with chemicals and medicines. They would probably survive a series of nuclear blasts. Sheesh. Don't get too upset with the fish store though and blame them for spreading them to your tanks. Your fish are better off not eating live feeders anyway. These 'ugly buglies' actually exist everywhere. It's just that they take over when there is plenty of food available and apparently you've been very generous in providing for them. Their population explosion is nature's way of trying to clean up.

Cut back on feeding and vacuum the gravel twice a week for the next 2 weeks. Remove 25% of the water each time. This gets things back in order slowly without shocking the fish. You may start to see them more at first but keep working at it. They are getting desperate for food once they start showing up more and will just fade away as they starve to death over the next couple of weeks. Here are links to some web pages about them and some of their "kin";

http://badmanstropicalfish.com/articles/article1.html
http://www.waterwereld.nu/platwormeng.html
http://naturalaquariums.com/inverts/worms.html
http://freshaquarium.about.com/cs/qa/f/faq0050.htm

At Your Service;
Chris Robbins