# Green worm



## Scaryman725 (Feb 4, 2011)

Hi

i have 3 small el natural tanks, i was looking at one of them today and i found this worm in one of them crawling on my plants, i was curious to know if you could tell me what it is and if its harmful cause im not sure, i was able to get a couple of pictures of it


Thanks for any help you can give


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## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

It looks like a butterfly or moth larva. It eats the leaves of plants and undoubtedly came in with one of your plants. I doubt it can stay alive very long under water. Probably it normally lives on leaves at the surface and emersed parts of the plant. Did you recently get some plants that were grown outdoors?


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## Scaryman725 (Feb 4, 2011)

I have gotten all my plants from a petstore

and i live in the chicago land area so its really cold so im not sure how it would have survived the shipping


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## Franco (Jun 25, 2010)

It doesn't look like a diptera or lepidoptera larvae. Kind of reminds me of an aquatic beetle larvae I've seen before in my college aquatic insects course. It is hard to tell from the photo but if it has sharp mandibles then its predatory. If not then it won't be. It doesn't look like a predator to me. Probably the larvae of a scavanger beetle of some kind.


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## mindnova (Jan 22, 2008)

Scaryman725 said:


> I have gotten all my plants from a petstore
> 
> and i live in the chicago land area so its really cold so im not sure how it would have survived the shipping


Remember if it got cold enough to kill the worm it probably would have killed the plants. This time of year I have trouble getting items due to the cold. One of the supplies uses heat packs and another delivers them packed in Styrofoam in a heated van.

Most plants for aquariums are tropical and would die or be damaged faster from cold exposure than insects. I would recommend either destroying it ASAP or containing it as this is how invasive species gain footholds in new areas.


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## Scaryman725 (Feb 4, 2011)

Ya its already dead and gone, i killed it just in case, i was just curious cause it was plants from a petstore and like miracle grow dirt, but i havent seen another one, so i think i got it in time


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## Franco (Jun 25, 2010)

how big was it btw?


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## Scaryman725 (Feb 4, 2011)

Franco said:


> how big was it btw?


Umm probably about 1&1/2 inches

somehwere in that area


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## Franco (Jun 25, 2010)

that would be a very big an nonnative aquatic beetle then. I can't think of a native species that has larvae that look like that and get big. Probably was a good idea to squish it.


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## HeyPK (Jan 23, 2004)

I still think it is a moth larva possibly in the family Cambridae. The green in the gut indicates it ate plant leaves. It looks characteristic of many of the types that fold over or roll up leaves and live inside. If you start to open up their little home, they wiggle out the other end and fall to the ground. You may have overestimated the size. Most of these types are about an inch long.


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## Scaryman725 (Feb 4, 2011)

thats very possible


and actually its funny you mention the home in the leaves thing


thats actually exactly what it did, it had made a kind of coccoon around its self of leaves


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