Microscopic worm invasion?

I've had my paddletail for quite some time now and she seems very healthy and active. I also have a ton of these little clear microscopic worms. They are about as thin as a hair and move around by twitching. I've tried to look up what kind of worm (if it even is a worm) this is, but I can't find anything too specific. I tried to take some photos of it, but they are too tiny for my macro lense. I assume they came from the plants (I have 1 small bushel of java moss and a piece of java fern) or from the food (she loves Newt Bites and frozen bloodworms. I feel her a chopped nightcrawler every so often, but she seems more excited about the newt bites than the worm)

My newt seems to have a ball running around the tank and snapping up these things. At first I thought she was a little batty chomping at the water, but now I see that she is feasting upon these. The numbers have recently exploded. I've been doing daily 20% water changes to try to bring down the population a bit.

So a few questions:

-Do you think these are harmless to my newt?
-What kind of worm/organism are these?
-Where do they come from?

I've read the CC site on microorganisms and I still can't seem to place these things. Since she seems to enjoy eating them, I will just keep up with the water changes and let her be. I just wanted to see if anyone else is in a similar situation/had any info?

EDIT: I always feed by forcep, and clean up any "scraps" after. I usually feed her over a small bowl that I can lift out of the tank pretty easily. Also - I test my water levels and everything is coming back normal except for slightly hard water.

I have had the same problem recently in my noto tank. There were micro-worm things on the glass and little limpet-like things. They did not seem to harm my newts, so as long as they aren't latching on to your newt, I wouldn't worry. I really can't tell you what kind of worm they are, sorry. As for where they came from, I would guess from the plants, I think that is how mine arrived. I wouldn't worry too much, a healthy tank usually ends up having more critters than just the ones you put in!

Could they be glass worm?
I know they're hardly 'micro', but I've had glass worms come in plants before(along with assorted bugs, mostly snails), particularly aquatic mosses. I usualy order plants online, which tend to be grown in large open tanks with no higher predators so good conditions for eggs and larvae.
Are any growing larger(up to half an inch or so), and do they have tiny black dots in them(air bladders)?

are these worm thing long or short? just i have seen something similar in the pet store where i bought my salamanders, the lady explained to me what they were but i cant remember, but if its the same things i can go and ask her. they were whitish/clear and were twitching around in groups on the water surface, does this sound like what you have? im not sure if they are the same thing, worth a try tho.

Thank you three for replying! The problem had definitely gotten worse and I did manage to identify the culprit. The worms had multiplied to the point where the water had grown slightly fuzzy looking and my newt became stressed and would wriggle everywhere furiously/tail fan about. I looked up glass worms and whatnot and these things didn't quite match. They do have a small dot in their body but it is brown.

What actually allowed me to identify the problem was when the larvae hatched.... My tank (and my room for that matter) got these little black flies - "drain flies" - and they were using my filter as their breeding ground. (No wonder that no matter how many water changes I did, the numbers kept increasing.)

So I replaced the pad in the filter, cleaned all the slime out of it with a toothpick (they use that to breed in) and did a full-cleanout of the tank. I ran the filter in a bucket of hot water over and over until it stopped spitting gunk out. If the flies were harmless I would have never gone to such measures, but by leaving them I risked spreading the flies to the drains in my home. The drains I have used to do water changes were then cleaned and bleached with boiling water. The man at the pet store suggested a certain formula and said it would be fine with my newt as long as I took her out for 2 hours while it was put into the tank... But the bottle said it was dangerous to amphibians and I would never risk that.

I used some cycled objects from another tank and I'm hoping that this expedites the cycling process. The tank has been larvae-free for two days now. My newt is currently chilling in a critter carrier, bug free and eating well with full water changes to prevent ammonia build up for the time being. She misses her terracotta pots though so I put a few little ones in with her.

Bleh what a mess...

Jeez, that really sounds like it was a hassle. I cleaned my tank too and it got rid of the "invaders". Glad your problem has been resolved.

I would say that it might have been better to just thoroughly clean out the filter, but leave the rest of the tank intact. A few of them would have been left, but I think this would have gotten rid of their breeding ground. You are correct that water changes alone won't always get rid of "critters", especially if there's a gunky filter or gravel in the tank. Anyway, good luck with the cycling. With just one newt and some pre-cycled ornaments, you could probably cycle the tank with the newt in place.