Blackworms

So I picked up a small portion of black worms a few days ago on a whim, but after doing some research I found that I shouldn't feed them to my Africans as it causes Malawi Bloat. So I decided to rinse them and throw them in my 28 bowfront. All of them.

A lot of them made it into the gravel, which is what I was hoping for. That should keep feeding less of a priority in that tank for at least a few days. Lol

There is a different type of worm already in the substrate though. They are small and red and I only see them when I gravel vac. So we shall see if two types of worms can coexist!

I plan on doing extra water changes to keep any extra bio load in check. Looks like no more gravel vacs though. Now to throw a bunch of MTS in here. What else?

So now they are pets?  

Well my fish were definitely surprised!! The worms were all over my plants on one side of the tank. It was pretty gross, but the fish were happy. I love it when they have pieces stick out of their mouths, it looks like snorkels!

that stuff is like meth for my fish....as long as they get to it before the worms burrow into the sand


I just can never trust live worms.....but I still give it as an occasional snack

I just picked up some live blackworms to try using as a snack for my L. robertsi but dang it...they froze in my fridge. Live and learn...I'm just not meant to feed live foods...having no luck at all.

I never keep mine in the fridge, and they seem to do fine if I change their bit of water every day or two. Next time try keeping them outside in a bit of shallow water, but I have found it can really depend on how close they happen to be to croaking anyway. Last time nearly all of them survived, but in the past I have found some dead ones before I even got home, it just depends. If you keep their water fresh they will hopefully last for a few days outside, I just had them in one of those hex fish bowls

They also ate a piece of blanched zucchini pretty much entirely, so maybe that helped to keep them happy for a while. It was gross to watch them wiggle all over and inside something that is usually food for me... blegh

I also put the last 1/3 into the tank to get some into the substrate, I find my fish don't really have a chance to eat them after that but I find live ones when I gravel vac even weeks afterward, so I'm sure they have been helping break down extra waste. They will probably be ok with the other worms.

edit: i forgot to mention, I keep them in something with a bit of surface area, and keep the water shallow so that the big blob they tend to form is only partially submerged. This may be important to keeping large numbers of them alive, they may use up all the oxygen if you submerge them?

I kept mine in the fridge, though after a few days they seemed less active. I'm not sure if there were any dead ones, or if they were just hibernating. Some of them moved as soon as I started flushing their container with water, but others didn't budge at all until being in the aquarium for a minute or two. I guess I took my chances. But I am happy to have these guys in the substrate. We'll see how they perform.

I'm sure there weren't too many dead ones, the only way it might cause problems is if they were all dead or something and just sat on the bottom rotting (which isn't likely anyway, a lot of fish would probably be perfectly happy with dead worms so they probably got eaten anyway)

Let me know how this works out for you, I have done the same thing a couple times and have seen no ill effects. I will just get a few of them when I do a gravel vac, and they still seem pretty active after being in the substrate for some time.

I have always wondered if there is any food which would really attract blackworms; maybe if it was buried under the substrate they would all come to munch on it, and you could sort of know where the majority of them were instead of being spread out all over the bottom