Weird worms

["Scott Olson" <olson7@hotmail.com>]

Hope someone can offer some guidance, here...

This morning I turned on the lights to my newly set-up 55 gallon planted 
tank.  I detected 8 or 10 strange little white or near-white worms wriggling 
in the water column.  They range from 3/8 to 5/8 inches (no, I will never 
convert to metrics!) and very slender.  They wriggle like mad to gain an 
inch or so of elevation, then sink s-l-o-w-l-y toward the bottom, then begin 
the process again.

Here's the situation:
The tank has no fish yet.  Low-tech set-up with no filtration and no heater 
(I'm planning on keeping dwarf sunfish in the tank, so no heater needed), 
lots of plants, Profile (Shultz Aquatic Garden Soil) substrate, one piece of 
driftwood which came from another of my tanks, and one good-sized rock.  
There are burgeoning populations of both pond snails and tiny daphnia(?) 
that probably rode in on the plants.

My question is, could the worms be dangerous to fish?  I'm worried that they 
might be an anchorworm or some such that came in with the snails and are 
attempting to continue their life cycle.  Their wriggling would certainly 
induce a fish to attempt to make a meal of them...then once inside, might 
they become parasites?

If they are parasites, could I simply wait a few weeks for the worms to 
starve before introducing fish, or would it be necessary to treat the tank?

I do have a cheap kid's microscope, so I could take a closer look at these 
critters if I knew what to look for, for purposes of identification.

Sorry to sound like such a newbie, but I'm really out of familiar territory 
here...

Thanks,

Scott

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