Can anyone identify this object?

[bettaMagenta]

I've seen those jelly-like masses before and initially thought they were pond snail eggs, but I've never seen them appear like this. The thing attached to it looks like a parasite worm, but I'm not entirely sure. At first glance, I thought it was a piece of root from the lily of the Nile I just planted in the tank, but the flash photo makes it seem segmented, which doesn't seem root-like. The jelly mass has been there for about a week, but the worm-like thing has only shown up in the last couple of hours.

[bettaMagenta]

Whatever that thing was, it's vanished now... 15 minutes later and it's gone, snail eggs are still there though.

[bettaMagenta]

Caddis fly larvae's a possibility I guess, never seen one in here before.

[sageSe]

I'm thinking that segmented thing might be a shrimp molt, possibly just one of the legs - do you have any shrimp in the tank, btw?

[bettaMagenta]

Armano, that's a possibility, yeah, could be a molt leg, I didn't think of that, but now that you mention it, it does kinda look like it.

[coltin]

"jelly mass is still there, but now there's this wormy thing inspecting the snail eggs - not sure what it is, looks like a parasite, but the flash pic makes it seem segmented, not like a plant root"

[Emeraldsea]

Those are indeed snail eggs. Colin's suggestion of a worm is also plausible. Another possibility that comes to mind is a shrimp leg, or even a scale from a shrimp leg, given the shape of the thing.

[Emeraldsea]

Those are indeed snail eggs. Colin's suggestion of a worm is also plausible. Another possibility that comes to mind is a shrimp leg, or even a scale from a shrimp leg, given the shape of the thing.

Shrimp do shed, that's how they grow, a new scale forms underneath and the old one's discarded, which can result in translucent bits floating or settling to the bottom.

[bettaMagenta]

I have 20 mature Armano shrimp in this tank, so I'm pretty familiar with their sheds, but this thing didn't look like any shed I've seen before. I do have a Vampire shrimp that lives under the driftwood, right behind where I took the picture - it's a bit bigger than the Armanos, so it's possible it's a leg from a shed, maybe from the Vampire.

[sageSe]

Upon closer inspection, I'm now entirely convinced that it's a shrimp molt leg – I've got an intimate familiarity with crustacean anatomy, and those segments are spot on for shrimp. If it were a worm, it'd lack the characteristic translucency of chitin, and the segments would be uniform in size – but these segments vary in length and thickness.

Take a very close look and you'll notice the tiny hairs on the lower part of the leg – a classic crustacean trait. I've got a diagram that might help illustrate this further. Specifically, the part of the molt in your tank appears to be one of the pereiopods, or "walking legs", as opposed to the pleopods, the "swimmerets".