I have a fairly new aquarium set up. About a year old- fairly new, considering my other tank has been set for over 5 years. Anyway, everything was new and (I thought) sterile. New gravel, new filter, the plants were all dry bulbs. About 4 months ago I took some elodea and hornsworth from my other tank, rinsed it well to get rid of the ramshorn snails that have taken over and added them. I was having problems with green water, so I did many a partial water change, got a pair of paradise fish and called it done. I got bored with the paradise, so i put them in an outdoor water garden to control skeeters. Water had turned green again so I decided, since there was no fish, to sort of start over. Dumped all water, rinsed the gravel and reset. Never cleaned the filter, to save the bacteria. In the gravel I found this red worms, after a web search I identified them as tubifex. Some of them managed to cling to the rinsed gravel and still populate the tank. This morning my gravel had red punk hair all over-my! they have reproduced- I'm not concerned of them being dirty, they live in a planted tank, only other inhabitants are my 3 apple snails, whom I added last week. My question is: how did I get them? I never fed my paradise live foods, or even freeze dried worms, so that was not the cause. Could they have come in with the bulb plants? The bulbs were the dried apogeoton(sp?) and hybrid lilies you find in the box stores. I do recall removing a rotted bulb that upon ispection was full of the worms, quite lively they were. Any ideas?

Enid