If the worms are limp, or if I see any dead white worms, I dig a small hole in my garden, pour all the worms in the hole, and cover them with soil. I don't feed weak looking worms to my fish. But this happens very rarely, and usually the worms look healthy.

Wash your hands with warm water and soap, then completely rinse off the soap, before you handle the worms, so you won't have anything toxic on your hands that might harm the worms or the fish that eat the worms.

Actually I can rinse and feed the worms to my fish without touching the worms with my hands. I recommend you learn how to do this too. It's still a good idea to wash your hands before you do anything with your fish, and wash them again after you finish with your fish.

There is another species of worms in the genus Tubifex that is called Brown Worms. They are a lighter shade of brown, and these Brown Worms are smaller than the Black Worms.

The Brown Tubifex Worms are more difficult to keep alive, and fish often become sick, after they eat Brown Worms. So we don't recommend the Brown Tubifex Worms as food for your fish, but we do recommend the Black Worms.

Click here for information about the correct scientific name of these worms.

Most fish keepers do not feed worms to fish like Goldfish, Barbs, Livebearers, and Danios. But I feed most of my fish a few worms. You may hear that feeding worms to most fish is not recommended. I think this is wrong. Most of the very good fish keepers that I've known have gone out of their way to feed their fish small amounts of several different kinds of live food including Black Worms.

I use a turkey baster to suck up a few worms and squirt the worms under the rock cave where the shy fish can eat them. Turkey basters are very inexpensive and available in most grocery stores. If you can't find a baster, ask someone working in the store to help you find one.

Some fish must eat worms. Elephant Noses, Baby Whales, Puffers, Black Knife Fish, and African Dwarf Frogs need to eat worms regularly.

If you wonder about what to feed a certain type of fish, here is how this website can help you. Suppose you want to know what to feed Angel Fish. First click here to go to our Search Page, and enter the word "Angel" with or without the quote marks.

The Search will produce a list of the titles to many pages on this website containing the word "Angel", and the titles of the best pages for "Angel" will be at the top of the list. Click here now to go to the page at the top of that list and scroll down that page to "Recommended Diet" where you can read about what to feed your Angel Fish.

You can use the Search Page to quickly find information about any fish that is discussed on this web site.

Kissing Gouramis also do not seem to enjoy eating worms. Click here for more about Kissing Gouramis.

A long time ago we noticed that Mbuna Cichlids from Lake Malawi in East Africa are much more likely to get a disease called bloat when fed worms. So we never feed Mbuna Cichlids any worms. Click here to read more about Mbuna Cichlids.

We also found out that worms are not good food for Peacock and Haplochromis species from Lake Malawi. Click here to read more about these fish.

Tropheus species from Lake Tanganyika are even less tolerant of worms and are almost certain to have problems when fed worms. We also don't feed worms to Frontosa, another cichlid species from Lake Tanganyika. Click here to read more about Frontosa.