My mom got a thing of water lilies a month or so back, and she’s growing them in a container that basically looks like half of a rain barrel. The other day while she was working in the garden she noticed a couple of these little pinkish squirming things in the water that sort of look like tiny earthworms except the body narrows to about half the width after the first 1/4 of their length. They’re roughly 1-2" long, I’d guess. I figured it’d be easier to ask here than try to look it up on wikipedia or with a google search, so does anyone have any idea what they might be?
Planarians? might be your critters. They can appear pink.
Hrmm… looking at the wiki article, these are a bit larger than the size range it lists. Also, it doesn’t look like either of the pictures they show. I might see about taking a picture and uploading it to see if that helps.
Ick. Yeah that looks like it might be them. She says she’s been buying mosquito pellets to keep them from growing in it, but that doesn’t mean they work.
sounds a bit like bloodworms (midge larvae)
Well, I went out and looked at them again, they sorta look like both larvae, but they don’t have the dark heads the mosquitoes (sp?) and the midge larvae don’t have the wide front end, and both are described as being shorter than these are. I’m thinking I should definitely get a picture tomorrow when it’s light out and put it up on photobucket or flickr, cause I’m not good at describing them.
Be careful not to drop your camera in the water - it makes the magic smoke come out.
They could be a number of things: are they segmented? Do they have discernable features at the mouth end? At the posterior end?
Insect larvae, aquatic oligochaetes, flatworms, and leeches are potential candidates so far… big head and narrow body makes me lean in the direction of insect larvae, though.
I thought it would drown the little imp that draws the picture - I’m so hopeless at keeping up with this modern magichology. 