Little worms and flying insects in my tank

[nick11380]

I have little worms in my tank. Their white and burrow in the brown alge on the side of the tank. You can see dark brown lines in the brown alge which is their burrow. They stay in their burrow and stick their head out to feed. If their spoked they quick pull their head into their burrow.

Some are wiggling as their floating through the water. Their about 1/4 inch (1 cm) long.

Their either in their burrows sticking their head out to feed, floating through the water or wiggling on the bottom.

These don't have the ability to cling to the glass (unless their borrowed in the brown alge). They can cling to the sponge filter and move kind of like a caterpillar on a leaf.

The adult insects are about 2mm and appear to be greenish with white wings.Their either standing the water or floating dead.

I didn't notice these worms until I moved my goldfish into a larger aquarium and turned this smaller tank in a shrimp tank. Now the aquarium is full of these worms. I had brown alge growing heavy on three sides of the tank for the shrimp but the sides of the tank became covered with dark brown lines 1 to 2 cm long which are these worms burrows.

From the research that I've done these worms appear to be midge larva (glassworms).

They don't appear to harm the shrimp but I hate these thing and want them gone. I scraped all the alge off the sides of the tank and did a 1/3 water change which helped cut down their population for a week or so but now the tank is full of them again.

Does anybody else have a problem with these worms/larva?

I've started thinking about getting ghost shrimp or some kind of snail to eat these things. I don't want get anything that would hurt my shrimp and think these would be safe.

Any ideas?

[Mustafa]

I've had something like what your describe. If your shrimp population gets to a certain size they will eliminate the fly larvae. They don't really harm the shrimp, but you may notice an increase of random little flies in your home. Ghost shrimp would take care of them, but they will also opportunistically catch other shrimp hatchlings and very small juveniles.