Tubifex worms as cichlid diet

[Pyramid_Party]

Hi,


Just wondering if its healthy for cichlids to eat tubifex worms 3 times a week. I know stuff like krill should be a treat and not necessarily part of the regular diet. Should tubifex worms be treated the same?


I currently feed my cichilds:

Hikari Bio gold pellets
Tubifex worms
Blood Worms
Red wigglers (earthworms)

Ocassionally (on a monthly basis usually), snails and crustaceans like cherry shrimp and small crayfish.

They wont eat any veggie matter. Ive tried fresh veggies as well as algae wafers and even spirulina flakes. They werent really interested in krill either. Ive tried frozen brine shrimp, they will eat it, but you can tell they dont like it that much. Ive tried market shrimp before, they chewed it up but spit it out. So I am using what Ive listed, but wanna know how good a food tubifex worms are for cichlids.

Thx

 

[Cichlaholics Anonymous]

just use it as part of a varied diet, like you would with krill, mysis, etc. I assume you're not referring to live tubifex, since you also have to deal with possible disease prevention depending on the source

 

[Pyramid_Party]

Yeah they are freeze-dried, I forgot to mention. So is like 3 times a week fine?

 

[cichlid2006]

i found with the cichlids i have and have had that once the fish get to about 4"+ the tubifex freeze dried cubes become more of a pollutant as the fish miss a lot of the loose worms that break away from the cube.
i stopped using them when i was having to gravel vac up to 3 times a week and clean my filters out almost weekly which is what i was trying to get away from by going with canisters.

however, as a food source they are fine as a small part of their diet much like bloodworm.