Tubifex Worms Anyone?

ZorroNet

ZorroNet

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Sep 21, 2013
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I read a book by a guy who stocks his tanks with tubifex worms to provide the substrate and plants with aeration and to provide food for hungry fish hunting around for a live meal. Has anyone here ever tried something like this, and if so, where in the world would one get tubifex worms? Also, I'm thinking you would have to keep stocking them somehow or give them refuge somehow to keep the fish from eating til they pop. Talk wormy to me!
 
I'd like to know the same thing. I need them for my brackish tank to help turn the substrate and got my gobies to eat.

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ZorroNet said:
I read a book by a guy who stocks his tanks with tubifex worms to provide the substrate and plants with aeration and to provide food for hungry fish hunting around for a live meal. Has anyone here ever tried something like this, and if so, where in the world would one get tubifex worms? Also, I'm thinking you would have to keep stocking them somehow or give them refuge somehow to keep the fish from eating til they pop. Talk wormy to me!
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Wiggle wiggle wiggle yeah! I hope that is enough talking wormy for ya LOL! Now on to the subject at hand. Ive seen blackworms used in this type of situation but they had to be replenished as they got eaten. This would deffinately be cool to try out though. It would probably be best to have a seperate setup so you can produce you own worms and replenish as needed unless you can find a way to have them multiply within the tank.

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I'm thinking some way to section them off with shallow cave-like structures would work. Worms like to live under rocks in a terrestrial situation, right?

I hope someone with experience with tubifex worms will enlighten us. Wouldn't it be a cool way to feed a more natural tank?


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if your fish can't get to the worms all the time, you shouldn't have to replenish very often or at all.

But if you're using the worms to turn over sand or substrate, then the fish are likely to be able to do the same.


for substrate aeration, I'm more a fan of MTS
 
Eh... I don't think there is a sole purpose for anything in an aquarium. Just like in nature, most living things are part of a cyclical system that benefits the whole system by doing its parts. Inverts like tubifex worms are the bottom of the food chain (provided a predator is present), and they also offer the benefit of breaking down waste for plants and aerating the substrate. MTS do the same thing, but will not have predators in my set-up, so they won't serve as a food source in this case. I'll have some MTS in the tank too simply because I like them and they are beneficial to the tank with or without a predator.

That said, tubifex worms must have a natural ability to hide somehow or they would be extinct by now with all the fish out there in the world looking to make them into lunch. My fish tell me tubifex taste like Nutella, so I can see why they would be interested in them. I'd like to have some in there to increase the level of naturalness (if that's even a word) I can mimic in a glass contained body of water. If I expect for them to survive "in the wild" environment of my aquarium, I'm going to have to provide them with some "rocks to hide under". FIRST, I need to get my hands on some. Anybody got a source for me?
 
ZorroNet said:
That said, tubifex worms must have a natural ability to hide somehow or they would be extinct by now with all the fish out there in the world looking to make them into lunch.
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I think it's like a game of Where's Waldo. In an aquarium, it's just too easy for the fish to find them.

Ich (swimming larvae) follows the same Where's Waldo concept when searching for fish to infect. In nature, it's not very dangerous, but it destroys aquariums
 
I don`t know about tubifex worms but every time I vacuum my 29gal that has a Sun Fish and crawdads I stir up up the pebbles. When doing this clouds of red worms comes up. They are real skinny and bout an inch long. Don`t know where they came from but the Sun Fish can`t seem to get enough of them. They supplement his diet of guppies and pellets.

Mel
 
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Well I'm staying to think I'll just get some freeze dried tubifex worms and reconstitute them. My tank will have a 16.8 times turn over rate. That should be enough movement to fool the gobies into thinking their still alive. Thanks for starting this thread ZorroNet and thanks to everyone else for their input.

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