# Tubifex Worms



## Safez (Mar 4, 2011)

Hello all...

I just noticed a rather large pink wriggler deep deep in my substrate... unsure if it was indeed a worm... I dug it up, and to my surprise about a dozen more surfaced and were soon devoured by my hungry barbs, convicts, perch and guppies... 

I do not have a photo at present but unsure I did a quick google search and it brought up tubifex worms... 

Question: Are the harmful to fish and could the indicate a more serious parasite problem? 

Reason I ask is after adding about 250-300 feeder swords, guppies, mollies, etc to my 145 gal oscar tank, one of my Green Terrors got what appeared to be anchor worms....

please help asap! I think i need de-los stat!


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## jasonpatterson (Apr 15, 2011)

Tubifex worms are usually fairly skinny little guys, but longish. If it was thick at all, it likely wasn't a tubifex. Fish love to eat the things, and people but them by the hundreds for that purpose (black worms are a type of tubifex.) I wouldn't worry about it really, and unless you're going to dig up the entire tank and throw out the substrate, you're not going to eliminate them easily (dog dewormer might work for them though, I dunno...)

They're able to survive in some really nasty environments, but they don't cause the nastiness, only survive it. They aren't parasitic in any way, they're fairly harmless filter feeders/burrowers themselves, but because they can come from such skunky places they are potentially disease carriers. Unless you added plants recently, these have probably been creeping around in your substrate for some time not doing any harm. If you look right at the level of your substrate and wait a while, you may see dozens of them waving their little bodies around filter feeding.

Just to double check what I wrote, I googled a bit and found several people complaining about a few types of fish (primarily herbivorous cichlids, mainly) having intestinal problems after eating tubifex from pet stores. There are just as many who feed them to prepare female fish for breeding though.


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## jahmic (Jan 30, 2011)

jasonpatterson said:


> Just to double check what I wrote, I googled a bit and found several people complaining about a few types of fish (primarily herbivorous cichlids, mainly) having intestinal problems after eating tubifex from pet stores. There are just as many who feed them to prepare female fish for breeding though.


Typically those intestinal problems pop up due to overfeeding with the worms, or not having them "chopped up" into smaller pieces...both of which can cause the fish to develop an impaction. 

It actually happened to me recently with bloodworms, and I've had it happen years ago with tubifex worms when I was breeding a pair of bettas. Having them in your substrate shouldn't be a problem. Unless you have a serious infestation in a tank with one fish...I think it'd be fairly difficult for your fish to overeat those worms since they have to hunt for them. I've also never seen my fish successfully yank an entire worm out of the substrate and go to town on it...they usually are able to nibble at them here and there, which should keep the intestinal problems in check.


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