WARNING!! MICRO WORMS KILL!!

I am absolutely gutted, I bought some micro worms to feed my 5 week old axolotls,

They have been eating the axolotls instead of being eaten!! I have about 15 left out of 200, and am absolutely gutted.

Please take this as a warning, DON"T FEED THEM!!

I only found out by fluke, they had been mysteriously dying since I started feeding the worms, so I decided to give the tank a complete clean, in case it was fungus or bacteria,

I put the babies in a container with some clean cycled water from one of our adult tanks,

and washed some micro worms and put them in the water, and then added the remaining babies.

a few hours later, we checked the babies, and the worms had attacked them, attached themselves to their tail fins, and started feasting.

I put 31 in alive, and took out 17, the micro worms had killed them!!

The remaining babies I put back in the tank also still had worms attached to their tail fins, some are dying, and some have died.

My micro worm cultures have gone in the fire.

Bump to the top.... Kiwis, these are for sale on Trademe, please beware!

Sorry to hear that Ang! Hope your remaining ones do ok.

Thanks.

I couldn't beleive it, and wanted to warn everyone about them, as they are becoming popular.

They look awful latched onto their wee bodies.

I think only about 5 look un affected from this lot, luckily I kept the second batch of eggs when she layed again, and they are 2 weeks and OK at the moment, I will clear out their tank tomorrow just to be sure.

How many eggs did you keep from the 2nd batch?

A friend's axies laid their first batch of eggs (3 females one male!) and 2 of the females laid eggs. So will pass information on (they're about 4/5 days old now some starting to look like bean shape). So exciting I've been making excuses to pop over daily and "help out".

Ang

I'm so sorry about this. I'm struggling to imagine how the teeny little microworms could do what you're saying. Are they really really tiny these worms? The ones I used were so small I couldn't even imagine they had mouths. And do they attack in a kind of 'pack' or what? Any chance they were a different kind of microworm?? Up until now, I haven't read anything remotely dodgey about using them.... what a hideous experience.

I have got about 100 from the second batch, luckily I kept all of them, they are in for a water and diet change.

The micro worms are really tiny, I couldn't beleive it either!

Some of the 'survivors' that I put in the tank have died, one of them is bent back, with a hole under his chin, where they have burrowed out.

Deb, have a look on trademe, that is where I got them from.

Out of interest, we put a heap in a container with the dead ones, and they instantly covered the bodies and started burrowing into them.

I am still stunned, I thought I was doing good for them by feeding them!!

They seem to anchor themselves onto anything in the water, and thrash about, and on the axies they just wiggled their way in!!

They are attracted to the babies sitting on the bottom of the tank, and just attack them.

That sounds neat Kapo! I love watching them develop, have spent hours watching them in their tank and now this happens!!

The babies are sooo cute!!

These are like the micro worms I got:http://aqualandpetsplus.com/Live%20Food,%20Microworms.htm

I've fed microworms multiple times and never had a problem.

But from behavior, it sounds like you didn't get micrworms at all. That's so strange...

Doesn'tt it Joan! I am wondering if they are some sort of parasite?

The thing I am worried about is these are being sold on trademe, and are very popular.

The other strange thing is I have two tanks going, and the other one seems fine,

These worms do not die in water, do micro worms usually?

Here's what the micro worms look like when they are scraped from the container:

This is what happened to the freshly dead babies, left in a container overnight with the worms.

The brown slimy looking stuff is the worms, and a sort of by product that they produce after eating them.

These are the dead babies I removed this morning, last night they were just starting to be affected.

If the oxygen content is high enough microworms can live for days in the water.

The microworms are not the direct cause of death as they do not have the enzymes required to penetrate the tissue of the axolotls while they are alive as they feed on bacteria and yeasts. Once the animal dies (particuarly small ones) decomposition is rapid enough that the nematodes can give the appearance of having burrowed through/out of the larva. These like many other worms when kept on a bare substrate will clump with themselves and when offered in excess with other objects which can include the axolotl where they can stick to the slime coat. If there are other infections that have penetrated the tissue then the worms can penetrate the tissue as decomposition will have already set in.

Large die offs of amphibian larva are not that uncommon (see http://www.caudata.org/cc/articles/why_larvae_die.shtml).

Ed

Seeing an organism eating a dead body does not mean that the organism killed it. As another example, it is common to see a freshly-dead salamander covered with soil mites. The mites don't bother the sals unless/until they die, then they move in for the feast.

Microworms can be an INDIRECT cause of death in larvae. I have seen this myself, with a strain of microworms that were perfectly "normal" and worked fine as a food source under other circumstances. If they are present in excess, they are a problem. I don't know if the problem is due to oxygen depletion by the worms, or perhaps the worms irritating the larvae, thus causing the larvae to be too active. For sure, microworms can kill simply by being present in too high of a concentration (which does not require them to attach or kill directly).

The amount of microworms needs to be VERY tiny - not enough to see with the eye unless you get up very close and have excellent eyesight. The second photo above, if that's the amount of worms used, it's just way, way too many microworms. The amount of microworms on the wooden stick is enough to feed hundreds of larvae (10 containers or more).

Sorry about your losses, Ang, and I wish you the best of luck with raising them on other foods. Baby brine shrimp are more nutritious, anyway, which is the reason I don't use microworms any more.

Thats interesting, and I bet really sad for you to have seen.

I bought microworms off trade me for my babies, I'm assuming we would have used the same trader. I bought them in a tub, and they have been fine, my axos have been gobbling them up!

Did you buy the ones off trademe that showed a photo of them in a container, or the worms that were shown on the soil?

The thing is, Jennifer, that the worms were latching on to the live babies, and hours later the fins were destroyed, and then they slowly died.

These babies were fine until I put them in with the worms.

Yes, that's the ones Anna.

The only thing I can think of is bacterial infection on the skin? Maybe the worm were attracted to the babies skin, and overwhelmed them?

But then they wouldn't look perfectly healthy, they would at least have been showing some signs, wouldn't they?

Given the quantity of microworms around the dead larva, the probable cause is stress due to overfeeding (whether that was due to direct irritation from too many worms or the resulting water quality issues is moot at this point).
As Jen noted above, the number of words added to teh water could have significantly reduced the oxygen available to the larva. Once the larva began to die, the water quality would have gone down hill quickly causing a chain reaction.

Lack of symptoms doesn't mean that they are healthy or are lacking in infections.

Ed