Bloodworms: THE NAKED TRUTH

[lkevin]

I just had a thought: What is the nutritional value of bloodworms in the discus diet? In terms of protein, vitamins, and maximization of growth potential...

They seem to be widely used by many, but are they really that good for our little friends? This question is not meant to offend anyone, I simply am curious about a food that I use regularly (1 time a day) and have accepted blindly as something that is good for them.

I know fresh arrivals are often started on bloodworms due to how easily they are accepted, but beyond that are they used that much by breeders?

What do you all think?

[lpiasente]

I think that is a good question as I have heard so much conflicting advice.

[MostlyDiscus]

So many factors and so few that test and verify. Handling and source come to mind. I feed a few different foods at any given time.

[Eddie]

Bloodworms are not a bad food. Some tend to think of them as junk food but they do actually have nutritional value. They do lack essential vitamins and minerals and for that reason, it is best to feed a variety of foods to give your discus a well rounded diet.

Also, in my limited experience, some fish tend to get hooked on bloodworms and become stubborn with other foods. To avoid the this, I do not feed bloodworms at all. I rather have my fish addicted to a flake or a decent mix.

All the best,

Eddie

[yim11]

I feed Hikari blood worms due to the fact that they add vitamins to the worms, this way I know the fish are getting some benefit from the worms.

From the Hikari website (http://www.hikariusa.com/products/bi...lood_worms.php):

Ingredients: Blood worms, water, beta carotene, vitamin B12 supplement, pyridoxine hydrochloride (source of vitamin B6), l-ascorbyl-2-polyphosphate (stabilized vitamin C), riboflavin, thiamine mono-nitrate, biotin, choline chloride, folic acid, pantothenic acid, inositol, niacin.

Compare that to San Francisco Bay Brand blood worms (http://www.sfbb.com/product_popup.as...loodworms&id=2)

Ingredients: Bloodworms

So when you ask about the nutritional value of blood worms I think you have to take the quality of the source of the food into account as well.

I feed blood worms to my adults once or twice a day, and to my younger fish once every other day or 2. The worms are a part of a varied diet that I feed.

HTHs,
-jim

[dwilder]

great protein to

[daboo]

I have freeze-dried bloodworms from Omega One. The nutritional content is 55% protein, 3% fat, and 5% fiber. Let's assume bloodworms (mosquito larvae) have the same water content as us = ~67% water. Normal bloodworms would then have approximately 18% protein by wet weight. This is a decent source of protein.

Now look at the nutritional content of frozen bloodworms. That is around 4-5% protein, 0.3% fat, and 0.8% fiber, but 94-95% water. Why such a discrepancy from what we expect the wet weight of bloodworms to be? The companies add about 3-times the wet weight with supplements dissolved in water. So while frozen bloodworms give you more nutrients in terms of added vitamins and minerals, you are also feeding less bulk protein. For growing discus larger you want to make sure they are getting enough of the major nutrients so they can grow, in addition to getting sufficient micronutrients. The micronutirents they get from frozen bloodworms will be what has diffused into the worm bodies. Most of frozen material is still water solution and that will just get diluted in your aquarium water, but the fish still get enough from the little bit that got trapped in the worms before consumption.

My instincts tell me discus need both - bulk food to grow, and supplements to make sure they get everything they need and obtain nice color. So you can either feed them loads of frozen bloodworms, or also give them other food that is meatier. Just something to consider as you feed them.

I also make my own concoction similar to Eddie's and Discus Hans' recipe. It is a meaty mixture fortified with vitamins and other goodies. I find my fish get full faster with this than anything else. So I know they get their bulk protein and their vitamins/minerals at the same with this as part of their diet.

[dwilder]

when you look at the protein of fb you have to factor the water when you do the protein is high

[Discus-Hans]

Feeding your Discus only blood worms, is like you eating white bread, day in day out, you will survive but is it good enough?????

Hans

[lkevin]

Good point Hans.

But if bloodworms have the nutritional value of white bread, I wouldn't be feeding it altogether...

[flyingdisc]

I’ve done a decent amount of lurking and searching the forums but this is my first post….it seemed it might go best with this thread.

I somewhat recently purchased 5 discus from the same person. Most of them originated from Malaysia, but he had been growing them out for 4-5month. I started feeding them bloodworms in the beginning (Hikari, frozen) because I wanted to make sure they would eat something, and not that’s pretty much all they will eat. It’s been about a month and now I think I have some individuals with HITH.

Water parameters are fine and they all have a good appetite... just only for bloodworms & beef heart. A few have the small pits that do sort of look like sensory canals, but there are more then four and obviously they look “new.” The one fish that doesn’t seem to have some signs is the one that will eat things other then bloodworms (mostly tetra color bits/granules).

So, with nutrition being one of the believed culprits of HITH….do you think this being caused by the bloodworm diet? How do I get them to eat something else? Suggestions?

Thanks in advance

[scottthomas]

If you quit feeing bloodworms to your discus they will quit eating them Your fish will eventually eat flake or pellets or many things you offer if you dont give in, especialy young fish. I also start my discus on bw but I start to ween themn of by slowly adding flakes , pellets, beafheart mix etc. I have always been able to get my fish to accept several types of food.

[Dutch dude]

I prefer to feed my fish various foods. The staple I use is Tetra discus pellets. I know Danziger Discus also use them as staple food and even grow their fry out on tetra discus granules. Along with the granules I feed small baby discus (smaler as 4 inch and larger as 1 inch) a lot of beefheart mix (Stendker) but also frozen artemis and bloodworms as aditional food.

I discovered an other problem with feeding larger quanteties of bloodworms. During growing out my curent pairs of RT, I feed to much bloodworms (at once). The fish had so much gas build up in their intestines they start swimming odd and flatten their swimm blather to keep below the surface. They started to bloat up and I was lucky the fish did´t died. When the fish poop I could see gas bubbles escape their intestines.

Fish love bloodworms and imo they are a nice supplement to their diet but I never feed to much of them.

For you to know,...white mosquito larvae contain more protein as bloodworms,.....but fish don´t seem to like them as good as bloodworms.

[hedut]

Indeed very nice topic, thanks everyone for sharing, if you just feed with fbw, fbw not hepling so much for coloring but it will make your fish fat and thick body .

[MSD]

Any food fed exclusively is not a proper diet for discus or any creature. Mixing Tetra bits, a good flake like Angels plus or ON, AND Hikari FBW is a fine diet for growing discus and many have been raised on it if you read breeders blogs. To make them bigger and grow faster a beefheart or equivalent mixture will work better, but you will get to the same place eventually with either diet. Less beef means a much cleaner environment unless you have the ability to do daily 100% and more, water changes. I do not so I stick with a cleaner diet now.

Interesting points raised in this thread, but from anecdotal evidence not an empirical study.