ZOMBIE TUBIFEX WORMS!!! RUN for your li........

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meBNme

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Oct 10, 2011
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Central North Carolina
ummm, scratch that......
.............."meander along at a leisurely pace" FOR YOUR LIVES!!!

I mean, they ARE worms after all....


What am I rambling on about?

I have a 65G quarantine/grow tank.

I put a 7" polypterus senegalus in it because he was trying to swallow the tail of my 7" sturgeon. (the 8.5" poly indi ignores it... go figure)

This was to be a holding tank until I took him to a LFS for a trade in on something different.

I dropped in a cube of tubifex freezdried worms in, and stuck another to the side of the tank.

He attacked and scattered the stuck one, eating most of it, and left the floater alone.

Next day I see a couple dozen or so stuck to the sides of the tank, just randomly on all 4 sides, thought nothing of it.
two days later i go to take him to the LFS, and there are hundreds and hundreds of little 1/4" worms all over the glass.

That really puzzled me.

Come back home and dont think about it for two days, look back in the empty tank, and there are thousands of them on the glass, moving around, wiggling, squirming, and even a few wigglers all in the water.

Its been over a week now, still there, still a lot of movement. had the heater off when I removed the fish, it went down to 70 degrees, now Ive had the heater back on just to observe these... whatever the heck they are... in the tank, its up to 86 now, no change.

What the heck?????!!!!!!!?????

Do I have zombie tubifex worms that came back to life after being freezdried, cubed, and stored in a jar on a shelf for who knows how long?

Any idea what they are if not tubifex?

The tank has no substrate, no decorations and just 3 floating plants that came out of my 150 because they were growing about 2 inches every 24 hrs and annoying me.
Dang things were 8 inches when I got em, two months later they were 30 inches and getting tangled up in everything.
It cant be anything from them, they came right out of the 150, well established, and no sign of these zombies in the 150.
 
Sounds not so good honestly. What brand are they because sounds like the freeze drying is inadequate. I thought tubifex worms were bad junk to feed fish anyways.
 
They are "Omega One" brand. Ive never heard anything about them really. I was just looking for more variety for the fish, and thought anything freeze dried would be OK.
 
I would contact them about the situation. I've always avoided tubifex I heard long ago they are usually polluted with something.
 
tubifex worms are about the nastiest food you can feed fish, they are not called sewage worms for nothing. Readup on them and you will agree they are not worth it. They do form spores so who knows, probably have some planaria though
 
Thanks for the replies folks.

I know now to avoid em. I wouldn't have considered calling the company, thats a good idea. Thanks.
 
hey, if they're growing in your tank, and your tank isn't sewage - then bravo for the free food. it could be something other than tubifex... I don't know if they do eggs, but it could be some sort of eggs survived the freeze drying process. if not tubifex, perhaps some "contaminant" species. I've read about people starting daphnia cultures from the eggs that survived in the frozen cubes. I've started daphnia from the eggs I saved by drying out the goop at the bottom of a died out tub. it sat in a container for about 2 years, added water and a little yeast-poof, daphnia.
 
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