Live worms in my gravel?

[jinny7]

Hi Guys

Its been a while having my tanks set up and at one stage I was feeding live blackworms.. now ever since then, more than 6months later, theres been some worms, (which i presume are the same blackworms Ive fed then, living in my gravel). They poke their ends out of the gravel and sway gently with the current, however as soon as I shine a torch to check my bristlenose they instantly tuck themselves back into the gravel. Colour is mostly brownish or maroon, with clear underside.

First time i saw them was when one of my large angelfish ripped one out of the gravel violently and swallowed it whole. There didnt seem to have any ill effects on my fish, however I prefer to remove them somehow if possible without restarting the tank from scratch. The angels have since been sold off and I am only keeping peppermints in this tank. I guess you can say im kind of creeped out when I go to vacuum the gravel during water changes and knowing Im going to have worms feeding on god knows what filth it is in the bucket to deal with too.

[ILLUSN]

to be honest if they are breeding in your clean tank then they are clean live food. i wish i had live blackworms in my gravel.

[jinny7]

to be honest if they are breeding in your clean tank then they are clean live food. i wish i had live blackworms in my gravel.

Only the fish im raising dont eat them.

[jinny7]

http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/4967/imag0084t.jpg
Spread throughout my gravel now, and more dense. :(

Anyone know of any fish i can introduce that wont bother my peppermints breeding? corys?

[Exotic Aquatic]

clown loaches, angels both a good addition and will sort out the worms... I cant confirm from the pic, but ILLUSN will easily be able to confirm if they are indeed blackworm.

[ILLUSN]

Looking at your photo you need to clean your gravel more often or swap it out for a thin layer of sand. My peppermint tanks are bare bottom and I get the same worms in-between my caves. I feed the to my angel breeders. I woulnd add any fist to that tank if you have peppermint fry

[jinny7]

Hmm I think clown coaches will eat anything including pepp fry. Atm no eggs or fry in this tank. Noticed that there's also microworms breeding like crazy in there too from my angelfish breeding days and recently somehow these freshwater barnacle things starting an infestation the tank too (from what I found on the net it sounds like limpets) I believe they got in from the 2nd hand breeding caves/logs I bought despite cleaning and soaking them in hot tap water

I think my best bet atm is to restart the tank, cram all the 20 odd pepps to my 3footer with 5 other albino longfin bn a week+ while I recycle the filter.


I planning to do this overhaul by removing the pepps and gravel first, cleaning my canister filter, dumping a generous helping of pool chlorine into the tank and letting it cycle into my cleaned canister for a day or 3... should kill all that crap right? Then draining the tank and refining with new water with lots of water ager to neutralize the chlorine, and then finally draining and refilling with proper water aged mix water, and let the filter cycle for a week with cheap fish before moving pepps back.

Thoughts?