can feeding fish tubifex worms cause diseases

[danthemanxx1]

i just read on a different part of this forum that feeding tubifex worms can cause diseases such as the fish just swimming upside down which i believe is something with the swim bladder
is this true?

[Cliff]

ARe you referring to the below thread ???

http://www.aquaticcommunity.com/aqua...ead.php?t=2357

The quality of some frozen and freeze dried food certainly can be questionable, which I beleive is the whole point of the above thread. Tubifex worms rasied in captivity can certainly be free of the problems discribed in that thread, but not too many people want to go throught the trouble of rasing their own fish food. Bad quality food, overfeeding, or feeding too much improper foods can and likely will lead to problems with your fish's health.

[Crispy]

+1

look for reputable brands of frozen foods to be safe. I definitely wouldn't be feeding any wild caught tubifex worms. gonna be real hard for someone to say that their live foods are 100% disease free.

[Flear]

any known safe distributors of tubifex worms ?

---and other thoughts---

diseases and parasites that may be present in tubifex worms, how do people deal with those ?

had strange thoughts yesterday, and i'm trying to explore ideas now, ... for culturing tubifex worms, would rotifers or moina eat the bacterial parasites we are worried about infecting our fish ?

i wouldn't consider adding them directly to the tank, but a quarantine tank where any possible diseases the tubifex may be carrying would be eaten in the water column by the rotifers or the like.

if the tubifex are clean it doesn't matter, but with everyones paranoia about tubifex carrying diseases, and i'll admit in the wild and tubifex farmers just after a profit culture conditions can be very discusting.

i've seen one article that suggests a rinse in mouthwash and other things to clean them with expected high casualties. fine poison works, poison is no garantee though (welcome to the superbugs of the world)

i did a quick search yesterday on moina parasites, late 1800s someone did a study and identifed there are parasites that can infect moina, ... so i thought "what about something smaller than moina?" ... rotifers tend to fit that bill

has anyone tried this, or anything else to purge diseases from tubifex worms ?

my thoughts are once dealing with smaller and smaller critters there's gotta be a point where the critters are small enough they're going to eat the diseases you don't want.

[Limming]

I would just feed something else thats not so risky why are you wanting tubifex worms?

[Flear]

for how hardy they are.
the alternative is blackworms, ... they want higher O2 in the water, i have no doubt i'll have enough O2 so i don't have to worry about it. but something about the added durability due to environmental factors appeals to me.

i could do both, i may do both, i may just do blackworms, ... but with the conditions tubifex can survive in to me is suggestive that they may have a higher survival rate (not counting being fish food themselves)