LOL groundbeef!

Valerie.......all the earthworms I see in my pond have drowned. Are you sure they're earthworms???

I've found earthworms in my pond too. Whenever I move my water lilys (in a aquatic basket) over, there are some at the bottom. When I repotted a marginal, which was in peagravel only, I found several amongst the peagravel. When I cleaned out my biofalls, there were lots at the very bottom and some sticking out of the filter pads. Mine are 100% earthworms. Some I tossed back for the fish to eat, the rest in the garden. I suppose the only good thing is that they were nice and clean and not dirty like the ones I find in the soil.
I think they must have just fell into the pond over time (whenever it rains, they are out and about the patio and garden and lawn). What surprises me is that they don't drown.

LOL. Earthworms. Consider the name, "earth". This is where they live and breathe oxygen. Go to google images and type in "leech".

There is aquatic worms that resemble earthworms.

http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/aquatic_worm.htm
http://www.epa.gov/bioindicators/html/worms.html

I find "earthworms" in my pond filter too and in the 1" gravel on the bottom of the pond. They are definitely earth type worms.

My goldfish will eat as many as I toss them from my garden.

George

missa7 - thanks for the info! these are in my pond too and i am glad to know what they are and that they are ok. i have been feeling sorry for the poor "drowning earthworms" -thought maybe they were behaving like lemmings, jumping in the water to die.
min

Okay, let's not be mean or sarcastic. She has a valid question. I know what she is talking about because we have them too. They are not leeches and they DO look like earthworms. We use them to fish and feed the frogs and fish in our fish tank. We have a fountain with several man-made ponds lined in hard plastic. In late Spring we noticed small egg casings attached to the sides of the pond. We scraped some off and put them in a container so my son could see what they were.Eventually small red worms emerged. They looked like baby earthworms. We have three gardeners who work for us( one has been with us for 35 years ) and one of them knew what they were. He said they were aquatic worms. They do resemble earthworms and in some cases they are not transparent.You can see some of the insides in aquatic worms but with ours you couldn't. I left them in our ponds because they don't hurt anything and they eat the gunk at the bottom of the ponds. Also, they are great to use for fishing and my aquarium pets love to snack on them! Hope this answers your questions. Have a great day!

There are Aquatic worms (such as Limnodrilus hoffmeisteri) that are closely related and look like earthworms, and they love ponds. They are beneficial to ponds with soil bottoms.

There is a good photo of Limnodrilus hoffmeisteri on the Wikipedia page of the same name that can help in identifying these worms.

Also, an article on pond worms that mentions these beneficial worms in the home pond: https://homeguides.sfgate.com/water-worms-garden-pond-49488.html

I wish this post came with a solid answer, as I am 100% dealing with the same problem. I live in eastern WV. I have a small 50 gallon pond with 2 filters- one for the spillway/waterfall, the second for a small fountain thing and a frog thing that spits water, and a layer of smallish rocks at the bottom. We shutdown the filters for winter, and at the beginning of April we went out to clean the muck and debris that had accumulated. There were giant (and by giant, I am not exaggerating when I say one of them was at least 10" long) earthworm looking things EVERYWHERE in the water! They were NOT dead, some of them seemed to be grouped around what *looked like* bloated ticks (that's what I originally thought, but after some research, they might have been eggs?). We got out the ones we could see, put a water clarifying agent in the water and started the pumps up. I tried to research what the heck we were seeing, and I couldn't get a solid answer because of these people who just want to argue about what you actually saw in your own pond. It wasn't limited to this page. April 18th (about a week or two later), the spillway pump was down to a trickle, and the water fountain had tiny little worms (these looked like tiny earthworms, not red in color) coming out of the holes. We took the filters out, cleaned the muck off from them and found tiny worms were INSIDE the filter mesh. Soooooo.... we went out and bought some goldfish to put in there. Fish like worms, right?? Obviously a tiny goldfish isn't going to eat a 10" worm, but we were hoping they would go after the babies... eggs... larvae?

Two days ago, April 27, the spillway was slowing down to a trickle again, the fountain was fine, though. Again cleaned muck, found worms. My husband pushed some of the rocks at the bottom around, and more of these giant worms started popping out. We decided to just start shoveling the rocks out. There really wasn't any plan beyond that, just get as many rocks out as we can, and go from there. So. Many. Worms. This time I got pictures of some of them! As my husband is shoveling these rocks out (being extra careful not to puncture the lining, or a goldfish), I'm spraying them off with a hose. Besides the giant earthworm looking guys woven through the rocks (and very much alive), there's teeny-tiny red worms attached to the rocks, as well. What the heck is going on in my pond?! The internet has not been helpful. I've learned more about worms than I ever wanted to know, but I have zero answers to my own problems. I either have glycera bloodworms (because of the tiny red worms), nightcrawlers (because of the full grown looking worms), and/or non-biting midge fly larvae (because those are also tiny red worms called bloodworms). Terrifying fun fact, glycera bloodworms have metal teeth, and they bite 😐. I wish I could go back to last year when the only "problem" we had in the pond were tadpoles. Help? Anyone? Suggestions (besides taking a flame thrower to my whole backyard, my husband said that isn't an option)?

This is too much nature for me. Nature is gross. At least they aren't African Jumping Worms, because that's a thing. *gag*

We are in my (Long Island) and have those giant aquatic earthworm like worms too. I think we also have flatworms (in the picture). Ick.

UGH, I can't!! I'm too girly for all these creepy crawlies! *gag*

I think- I HOPE- our worm saga finally ended this past week. Our spillway/waterfall pump clogged up one more time, so we turned it off until we could get to it (so as to not burn the motor out). On Thursday (May 13) we put our 4 goldfish in a bucket, and we drained the pond as much as we could, removed what rocks were left (sprayed those off), cleaned the pump filters, scrubbed the sides of the pond and my husband, bless his soul, hand-scooped up as much muck, debris and "bleh" as he could (worms included). We filled it back up with fresh water, treated the water with algaefix (for whatever was left), and treatments to make the water more hospitable for the fish, put the rocks in and put the fish back in. They seemed happier, they were swimming around more than they had been. The water is still crystal clear, and as far as we can tell, worm free!! **

The take away from this whole experience is there was no simple fix. We basically had to do a whole overhaul/deep clean of the pond, which probably wouldn't have been possible if we didn't have the preformed liner.

Ick :( we’ve done that before. It’s nasty work. Our pond is about 600 gallons so it’s not as easy as a dump and scoop. i saw that a panacure misfire might work so I’ll try that.

Ooof, mine is only a 50 gallon, and I thought that was a lot of work.

Good luck, and may the odds be ever in your favor!

I thought worms drowned in water too .. i went creek crawling and found piles of what looked like Night Crawlers scattered here and there on the bottom of the creek.

Ive been trying to google what the heck theyre doing and found this post lol

(I used to be too girly to touch them but in an effort to not pass down the squeamish to my daughter i have over come it enough to take photos like that 🤣)

Ohhh my lort- nope I'm too much of a girly girl, I can't do slimy and wriggling. I saw some episode of Unexplained Files (that might not have been the show) on Travel Channel. They were telling a crazy story about how Texas had some kind of mystery worm event. They weren't underwater, but the worm scenes they showed gave me 'Nam flashbacks.

Since the last time I commented on here, we upgraded the pond to a 250 gal because the fish we got were outgrowing the 50 gal (hopefully gettin' to that worm eatin' size). We also put down geotextile underlayment way out from the pond edges, secured it with landscape edging, and covered it in pea pebbles; we didn't have any kind of weed or erosion control before. The worms could just slide out from the dirt and plop themselves into the pond. I'm really hoping I've slowed down any future wormpocalypses. My nerves and my stomach can't take all that again!

(The 50 gal pond has been repurposed into an in-ground planter. Still waiting on the actual plant.)