Feeding tubiflex worm? Please read this.

[yongkeat]

Recently went to Ipoh to visit my relatives and also visited my uncle`s farm, there i saw how tubiflex worm are being cultivated, it`s horrendous. First water are used to wash the pens and habitat of pigs,chickens and other livestock, from there the water is drained together with excrement into a huge muddy area through a canal or "langkang". Fish being cultivated at a nearby pond in the farm also had their dirty water drained into the same muddy area(I`m not so sure about other stuff being transferred here). Together with my uncle and some other workers, we dig the mud out into wagons and transfer the mud to a "washing area" where we use water to break up the mud and extract the worms inside, from there the workers pack the worms with some of the washing water into packets to be transported for sales in local fish shops there. I don't know how local fish farms cultivate their worms or where local fish shop get their sources from, i'm never going to feed my fish any tubiflex worm ever again now that i know why tubiflex worms smell like excrements.

[tetrakid]

We may also like to consider that the best and most tasty vegetable and fruit crops, etc have also been cultivated using animal manure for ages.

[stormhawk]

Err.. two of the live food we get at the LFS, namely Tubifex and live Daphnia/Moina are cultured in such dirty conditions. For the cladocerans, they need bacterial or algal blooms to survive in the mud ponds, and the nutrition usually comes in as effluent from farms that produce animal waste. Locally, I believe no farm here produces these for the local market, but import from Malaysia every day or so.

The dirty conditions is no surprise as Tubifex have been found living in extremely dirty conditions and they require rotting organic matter to survive, along with a source of running water. See this video for a ball of Tubifex found in a sewer in the US:



Also, Tubifex were found in previously polluted rivers like the Thames in England. With Tubifex you need to give them time to purge their guts of the nasty stuff, which usually appears as greyish mass etc. As with any kind of food, live or others, the risk is always present. There is no 100% foolproof way to make sure the food you feed your fish is "safe" for their consumption, because people have been known to feed their fish with spoiled foods before, and these were usually dry, freeze-dried or frozen foods.