Will tubifex worms help break down amonia in my tank by eating fish waste?

Answer 1

No, because for everything they eat (and they'll eat organic mater, not necessarily wastes and certainly not "ammonia") they produce their own wastes in the tank.

The only thing that removes the ammonia well is bacteria - these not so much as "eat it" as their metabolims breaks certain chemical bonds, and the energy released is what provides them with energy to live - they also produce wastes, and in their case, the waste is nitrite, which another group of bacteria use.

It sounds to me if you have a lot of ammonia, your tank is still early in the cycling process (you don't have enough of the bacteria that use it yet), you're overfeeding (which may be why you have debris in your gravel), your tank is overstocked (too many fish for the tank size), or you aren't doing maintenance as often as needed - you should be using a gravel vacuum to siphon up debris from the top of the gravel and clean down into the gravel in about 1/4 to 1/3 of the tank and remove about 1/4 of the water each week while doing this. Just switch sections that are cleaned each time.

Answer 2

No. Tubifex worms won't survive in your tank, and they wouldn't eat enough fish waste to make a dent anyway. Plus ammonia does not come from just fish waste, the fish are constantly releasing small amounts. You shouldn't need anything to help break down ammonia because bacteria naturally forms in an aquarium to do this - this process is called a "cycle".

Answer 3

not really. as they will inturn produce their own waste.

if your going to consider snails... the same thing... They will produce their own waste so no.

What you should do is check your filter media. are u using an ammonia reducer in your filter media under chemical filteration.

adding live plants will also help with ammonia in check.