Worm Identification

[GoofyGarra]

I have noticed a large colony of worms in the sand of my 5gallon tank, they appear reddish and are rather thin, i can see they burrow into the sand. Im trying to start a culture of these as another live food option but have no clue what they are. Any ideas?

Picture is worms buried in sand. They stick their heads out and wave them around but i can't get a good picture of that

[Guppysnail]

Most likely tubifex. I tore apart the rock piles in my hillstream loach tank last month to vacuum the sand and had an impressive colony going. I threw an Apisto spawn in there to clean them up.  They wiped the tubifex out in short order and the Apisto babies grew like crazy.  

 

[GoofyGarra]

On 12/30/2023 at 6:56 PM, Guppysnail said:

Most likely tubifex. I tore apart the rock piles in my hillstream loach tank last month to vacuum the sand and had an impressive colony going. I threw an Apisto spawn in there to clean them up.  They wiped the tubifex out in short order and the Apisto babies grew like crazy.  

that would make sense, im going to try and keep them alive and breeding. I think i recall an episode of The Aquarist Podcast where Rosario Lacorte talks about tubifex worms, im going to listen to that and see how my culture attempt is going. A live tubifex culture would be super cool, my fish love the freeze dried, i can only imagine they would love the live stuff too.