Feeding California Black Worms

[greyhoundfan]

Guy from pet shop said to add a few drops of milk to CBWs. This gives them nourishment. It is something he said he does and he also rinses his CBWs daily. I'm all for rinsing them daily but dosing them with milk??

Any one else heard or tried this?

[CAGE-RATTLER]

When i do get them ........... they dont last long enough to worry about being nourished.

[billeagan]

Guy from pet shop said to add a few drops of milk to CBWs. This gives them nourishment. It is something he said he does and he also rinses his CBWs daily. I'm all for rinsing them daily but dosing them with milk??

Any one else heard or tried this?

I would stay away from those. Seems a bit strange to me.

If you want to feed your worms use flakes and just mix them up a few minutes after feeding so the flake does not burn them out.

You should rinse every day to every other day.
Bill

[Elite Aquaria]

When i do get them ........... they don't last long enough to worry about being nourished.

Cage,

Where are you getting your worms from? I have no problem keeping them for 4 - 6 weeks in my fridge. Daily water changes are needed though with dechlorinated water that is keep inside my fridge.

Dan

[CAGE-RATTLER]

Cage,

Where are you getting your worms from? I have no problem keeping them for 4 - 6 weeks in my fridge. Daily water changes are needed though with dechlorinated water that is keep inside my fridge.

Dan

I get them $20 per pound at my LFS .......... and what i meant was ........ They are all eaten so fast ... i dont have to worry about them being nourished .... lol.

[RKeiger]

I think one very large problem with cbw is that people rinse them in cold water from the tap and then they get slimy and die. I don't know about everywhere else, but cold water from the tap here in the summer is someimes 80 degrees+. It feels cold to the touch, but its not cold. Most of the year its over 50 which still isn't cold. You have to use refrigerated water. I have had no problems keeping worms for weeks on end as long as they get rinsed with actual cold water. And I don't dechlorinate it either. They don't care.

[Harriett]

That's interesting...my experience is that the worms do fine in the tap water rinsing (I use as cold as the tap will put out in whatever season--in Chicago) but if I don't dechlor when I do the daily refill of the tub I keep them in, they go to slime after a little while. By adding dechlor they stay in really good shape until they are gone...go figure! I also figured out that contrary to keeping them in water an inch or two over the top of the worm layer (as I was taught), if I have more water in the tub it keeps them better--makes sense, since there is more volume so it doesn't foul as easily.
Best regards
Harriett

[Elite Aquaria]

I get them $20 per pound at my LFS .......... and what i meant was ........ They are all eaten so fast ... i dont have to worry about them being nourished .... lol.

That is what I am talking about....Buy them Feed them and watch the fish grow...:)

[Polar_Bear]

I actually have an experiment going along these lines ATM. I have a 10 gallon that I was trying to breed rams in. I removed the rams in this BB tank but just let it continue running. That was 3 weeks ago. I looked in the tank the other day and was amazed to see lots of CBW all over the bottom. The tank was being kept at 84F and was full to the top with a small HOB as the filter. This is pretty contrary to everything I have read about keeping CBW, I'm now feeding them flake food and will report back on how they are doing. In retrospect though, how many of you with substrates that feed CBW gravel vac out live ones all the time? I know I do, which leads me to suspect that keeping them at low temps may not be the best option.

[Elite Aquaria]

If you are going to store and feed them to your fish without feeding them then cooler temp in a fridge is what you must do. In this scenario they are dormant so they do not need food.

If you are trying to breed them (good luck) and feed them then you need to keep them at warmer temp like you noticed in your tank. If you do this you must feed them or they will die.

Depends on what you are trying to do with them.

Dan

[Cosmo]

Larry,

You've touched on the major drawback to feeding CBWs in a non BB tank. You end up flushing a great deal of them down the drain when you syphon. That was perhaps the ONLY good thing about having an air pump driven UGF in the old days. The worms would burrow their way down only be caught up in the updraft and delivered back to the fish, who learned to wait by the lift tubes :D

[Elite Aquaria]

I think the draw back is trying to raise discus in a non BB tank. The issue of food making its way into the cracks exist with flake, paste or live foods. Simply put just don't use substrate at the bottom of your tanks...

[Cosmo]

BB is really the only way to go IMO for numerous reasons.
Jim

[oodi]

Guy from pet shop said to add a few drops of milk to CBWs. This gives them nourishment. It is something he said he does and he also rinses his CBWs daily. I'm all for rinsing them daily but dosing them with milk??

Any one else heard or tried this?

I've fed CBW for a few years now... never heard this one, and don't think I would try it.

Judi
:)

[CARY_GLdiscus]

Just Like Discus,

CBW's Can be kept,fed and cleaned in many diffrent ways!

hth
Cary Gld!

[Polar_Bear]

Jim,
I think you may have missed my point. My point is that since CBW stay alive in a discus environment and so don't foul the water column, they are one of the best foods to feed, whether in a BB or tank with substrate. In my case I use Soil Master Select as my substrate in all of my "planted" tanks. This substrate is so light that even fish such as Paracheirodon axlerodi (Cardinal Tetra) have no problem "rooting" though it. The fact is though that I have many other genera of fish that happily clean the substrate; common plecos, L-018, C julii to name only a few. Perhaps the best fish at rooting the substrate are my Chromobotia macaranthus (clown loaches) and they tend to leave no CBW behind.

[greyhoundfan]

Love all the feedback from this thread. Many different ways of doing things.

Out of curiousity, I started adding a few TSPs of milk to the worms. As soon as it hits them, the worms in the milk drop area go crazy and start wriggling like there's no tomm. I don't know if that's a good thing or bad. I rinse them twice a day and they don't seem to be any well off or worse.

[RoninGai]

Howdy all i feed blackworms as well, i've been adding some garlic juice to mines about 2 drops per tbl spoon.

[surfzone]

i feed my discus black worms and they will eat just them if i let them, i find that the worms missed by my fish live for quite a while in my tank that once found are quickly eaten. I love this food source mainly becaus it helps encurage natural hunting behavior in the fish, they are good meaty food for the fish, and the fish love them. Black worms blood worms, beef heart, and mysis shrimp are all part of my feeding schedual.