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Help ease my crazy wife’s mind


JoshStover
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Will someone please confirm that this is a detritus worm? My wife is acting like I found the spawn of satan in one of our tanks and is about ready to tear down the fish room! She has a pretty substantial phobia of worms and parasites. I enjoy messing with her and I’m tempted to have her look at the underside of our tanks 🤣🤣🤣🤣
 

thanks in advance 

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On 9/13/2021 at 11:39 AM, ARMYVET said:

That is a good old fashioned earth worm.  Dug many up back in the days to go fishing.  

You must have very small fish...that would have been lunch in most tanks.

Also your wife is right...it is actually the spawn of Satan 

Absolutely an ordinary earthworm. They are great for terrestrial plants 😁keeps earth aerated and their waste is great fertilizer 

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On 9/13/2021 at 11:44 AM, Guppysnail said:

Absolutely an ordinary earthworm. They are great for terrestrial plants 😁keeps earth aerated and their waste is great fertilizer 

Yes they do!

Great for people food too.  I use it to catch the fish IM going to eat...😋

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Red wigglers (Eisenia fetida) which is what you’ve got there, is a composting worm that is extremely tolerant of very wet conditions.  On one of my composting forums I used to haunt before I became such a giant mosquito magnet, someone did a mini experiment to see how long red wigglers would live in water.  They had it highly aerated and the worms actually reproduced and lived for months!

They got the idea because worms they fed to their fish got under the undergravel filter and were surviving when they did a reboot on the tank.  They didn’t know how long they had been under there, so they ran the little “study” and it turned out to be quite a long time.  Last I knew they were still alive, but that was years ago.  I can’t find that forum any more.

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On 9/13/2021 at 12:00 PM, CalmedByFish said:

I wonder how an earthworm has been surviving in a tank. When it rains, they hurry to the surface for air... I thought.

@Odd Duck answered while I was typing. Nvm.  

Thats how I used to collect them...right after a heavy rain....They would come up to breath and we could collect buckets full.  Put them in a container with shredded newspaper and they would live indefinitely.  Always had worms for fishing. 

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There isn't a collar on the worm, so that is not an earthworm. 

@Odd Duck called it: red wriggler / eisenia feitidia is used for compost bins, fishing, and gardening, as well as feeding to turtles and large predatory fish.

Even axolotl enjoy eating them.

If your aquarium is sufficiently aerated (like with a UG filter) they can live in the substrate for months.

My spouse has a phobia about worms and larvae (can't even say the words around my spouse😅) so I know first hand of the struggle. 

If you have any potted plants near by / overhead, that's probably how the worm got in... unless you are like me and randomly put wood in the aquarium with out overly scrubbing it if there is no risk of chemical contamination 🤭 (ask how I know)....

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On 9/13/2021 at 6:51 PM, Various Vivaria said:

That's the biggest demon I've ever seen. From my extensive research they feed exclusively on human flesh. Lol

 

Actually the one you are thinking of is the black earth worm...Lumbriculus Variegatus.  They are the ones who burrow into and eat the flesh of humans.  

Eisenia Feitidia or red wiggler....those are the ones who slide up the nostrils and take over the brain and take control of the body of the host. Essentially turning the host into a worm slave in the hopes of some day becoming a Politician.

Well because we all know those are all worms!

 

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